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1922
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TOM'S T^/^(jri:?{GS
By F. Poulsen
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ETRUSCAN
TOMB PAINTINGS
Oxford University Press
London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen
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Humphrey Milford Publisher to the University
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012 with funding from
Research Library, The Getty Research Institute
http://archive.org/details/etruscantombpainOOpoul
Fig. u. 'LA BELLA BALLERINA' IN THE
TOMBA FRANCESCA GIUSTINIANl
After the facsimile of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek
Fr072ffs/'iece
ETRUSCAN
TOMB PAINTINGS
THEIR SUBJECTS AND SIGNIFICANCE
BY
FREDERIK POULSEN
KEEPER OF THE CLASSICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE NY CARLSBERG GLYPTOTEK, COPENHAGEN
FELLOW OF THE DANISH ROYAL SOCIETY
TRANSLATED BY
INGEBORG ANDERSEN, M.A.
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1922
TO MY FRIEND IN STUDIES
AND TRAVELS
OVE JORGENSEN, M.A.
PREFACE
THE following sketch is based upon investigations made
in the Etruscan Tombs at Corneto and Chiusi, and on
comparison of the original wall-paintings with the fac-
similes and drawings made from them and preserved in the
Helbig Museum in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. It was
originally published in Danish, in 1919, as a guide to
students in that Department.
I am greatly indebted to Mr. G. F. Hill, of the British
Museum, for his revision of the translation.
Meanwhile the first volume of the promised work of
Fritz Weege {Etruskische Malerei, Halle, 1921) has appeared,
copiously and splendidly illustrated. The text contains
general views concerning Etruscan religion and society rather
than descriptions of the paintings themselves, and I cannot
refrain from saying that I find Weege's statements and
opinions, and the parallels which he adduces, too often more
fanciful than convincing, in spite of the vast erudition dis-
played therein. I do not find anything in my own text
which I feel inclined to alter after reading his book.
FREDERIK POULSEN.
Copenhagen,
January 1931.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
I Wall-painting from the Tomba Campana . . Facing page 7
3 Main picture in the Tomba dei Tori at Corneto .... 7
3 Back wall in the Tomba degli Auguri . . . . . .11
4 Right main wall in the Tomba degli Auguri . . . . .13
5 Part of the left main wall in the Tomba degli Auguri. (After a
coloured drawing in the Helbig Museum) . . . . .13
6 Painting from the Tomba del Pulcinella ..... 13
7 Left main wall of the Tomba delle Iscrizioni . . . -15
8 Back wall of the Tomba delle Iscrizioni . . . . .15
9 Picture from the Tomba del Morto at Corneto . . . .16
10 Picture from the Tomba del Triclinio . . . . . .16
1 1 ' La bella ballerina ' in the Tomba Francesca Giustiniani Frontispiece
13 Right main wall in the Tomba delle Iscrizioni . Facing page 19
13 Back wall in the Tomba delle Leonesse at Corneto ... 30
14 Left main wall in the Tomba del Barone ..... 20
15 Right main wall in the Tomba delle Bighe ..... 23
16 Etruscan terra-cotta head in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek . . 33
17 Part of the small frieze in the Tomba delle Bighe. (After Arch. Jahrb.
1916) ........... 23
18 Wall-painting from the Tomba del Morente : the lassoing of the horse 34
19 Part of the small frieze in the Tomba delle Bighe. (After Arch. Jahrb.
1916) ........... 34
20 Part of the Tomba della Scinunia at Chiusi . . . . .24
21 Part of the small frieze in the Tomba delle Bighe. (After Arch. Jahrb.
1916) 27
32 Part of the small frieze in the Tomba delle Bighe. (After Arch. Jahrb.
1916) 37
33 Symposium in the Tomba delle Bighe ...... 37
34 Back wall in the Tomba dei Leopardi. (After Arch. Jahrb. 1916.
PI. 9) 31
35 Married couple on an Etruscan cinerary urn . . . . .31
X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
26 Picture from the Tomba degli Scudi at Corneto . Facing page 35
27 Picture from the Tomba degh Scudi at Corneto. (After a coloured
drawing in the Helbig Museum) . . . . . -35
28 Arnth Velchas and wife on couch. Picture in the Tomba dell' Oreo.
(After a coloured drawing in the Helbig Museum) . . .36
29 Head of Arnth Velchas' wife. From the Tomba dell' Oreo . . 37
30 Back wall in the Tomba del Vecchio ...... 37
3 1 Symposium in the Tomba Gohni at Orvieto ..... 38
32 Wall-painting in the Tomba Golini ...... 38
33 Kitchen interior in the Tomba Golini ...... 40
34 Painting in the Tomba del Letto funebre, at Corneto ... 40
35 Demon in the Tomba dell' Oreo ....... 49
36 Picture in the Tomba dell' Oreo at Corneto ..... 50
37 Hades, Persephone and Gerj^on in the Tomba dell' Oreo . . 50
38 Drawing from Michelangelo's sketch-book .... Page 51
39 Wall-painting from the Tomba Franfois at Vulci . Facing page 54
40 Painting in the Tomba Golini at Orvieto ..... 54
41 Painting from the Tomba della Pulcella ..... 54
42 ReHef onatombaltarfromChiusi. In the Barracco Collection in Rome 56
43 Cinerary urn from Chiusi . . . . . . . . 56
44 Roman sarcophagus in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek ... 58
45 Procession of the dead in the Tomba del Tifone .... 58
46 Painted frieze in the Tomba del Cardinale ..... 58
47 Part of the frieze in the Tomba del Cardinale .... 58
ETRUSCAN TOMB-PAINTINGS
I
THE tombs and tomb-paintings of Etruria constitute a field
of archaeology in which the investigator is particularly
apt to be reminded of numerous sins of omission and
to be haunted by a painfully uneasy conscience. Indeed, the
older archaeologists have less reason to plead guilty before
the bar of science than those of more recent times. When
the discovery and excavation of the Etruscan tombs began
to make headway in the twenties of the nineteenth century,
publications in text and illustrations followed comparatively
close upon the discoveries. The first misfortune, however,
took place when three of the most interesting tombs were
published, the Tomba delle Bighe, the Tomba delle Iscrizioni,
and the Tomba del Barone.
It was the major-domo of the Bishop of Corneto, Vittorio
Masi, who first opened them together with other tombs in
the vicinity of Corneto. In the spring of 1827 ^^ invited
two German barons, Stackelberg, an able archaeologist, and
Kestner, the Hanoverian ambassador in Rome, to inspect
them, and, if they so desired, to survey, draw, and publish
the pictures in the tombs. The two men arrived, accom-
panied by Thiirmer, a Bavarian architect, to find the tombs
themselves despoiled of their accessories, but the walls
covered with wonderful pictures dating from the sixth and
fifth centuries B.C. They set to work immediately, studying
and copying the pictures in the richest of the tombs, the
Tomba delle Bighe. Stackelberg made five charming water-
colours in order to save the colouring for posterity ; Thiirmer
executed eleven careful drawings. In all, the two men painted
and drew two hundred and twenty-five figures, and the whole
of the material is now preserved in the Archaeological
2468 B
2 STACKELBERG AND KESTNER
Seminar of the University of Strasburg. In his diary
Stackelberg gives a vivid description of the discomfort which
they experienced, drawing by torchlight in the cold, dank
tomb-chamber, and only emerging now and then into the
warm Italian spring sunlight in order to recuperate or to
enjoy a light repast on the top of the tumulus, commanding
a view of the sea. To this were added fatiguing social duties ;
local patriotism was aroused in Corneto ; the noble families
in the town vied in displaying hospitality to the Germans,
and big banquets were held, at which sonnets were recited
to the ' heroes ' who once slept in the tombs. The drawing
and copying of the colours on the walls in the Tomb of the
Chariots, as well as in the Tomb of the Inscriptions and in
the Tomb of the Baron — so called after Baron Kestner —
were rightly considered the chief matter, because in the very
first summer after they were opened, the dampness of the
tombs in a few weeks ruined large portions of them, especially
in the Tomba delle Bighe. After his return to Rome, Baron
Stackelberg caught typhoid fever and did not recover till late
in the winter. In the next spring he went to Germany, where
his excavations had created such an immense sensation that
even the aged Goethe asked Stackelberg to dine with him in
Weimar and studied the drawings with the greatest interest.
But, in spite of the national enthusiasm called forth by the
excavations, the projected great work came to nothing ; the
coloured plates of the paintings, with the then existing means
of reproduction, promised to be so expensive that the
publishers took alarm. Pending these negotiations, the
paintings from the three tombs were published in French
and Italian works in very poor and incorrect reproductions,
and no other reproductions were available till 191 6, when the
German archaeologist, Weege, at last managed to bring out
an admirable publication of the Tomba delle Bighe, the most
important of the three tombs .^
Similar uncoloured, not very rehable drawings continued
to be the method of reproducing the Etruscan tomb-paintings
^ jfahrbuch des deutschen archaologischen Instituts, xxxi. 1916, p. 106 fF.
MODERN LITERATURE 3
in the following decades ; after these drawings were made
the reproductions in handbooks like Jules Martha's L'Art
etrusque (Paris, 1889). An Englishman, George Dennis, in
his Cities and Cemeteries oj Etruria (London, 1878), gives a
vivid description of Tuscan scenery and of the ancient tombs.
At times he rises to a lyrical enthusiasm ; for instance, in his
description of a dancing figure, ' la bella ballerina di Corneto ',
in the Tomba Francesca Giustiniani. But neither Dennis
nor any later visitor procured copies which come up to their
enthusiasm ; in fact, the beautiful ballerina has never even
been drawn or photographed, and is not to be found in any
work on archaeology or art. Dennis's book throws a dreadful
light upon contemporary excavation. About Veii, he writes
that the greater part of the district belongs to the Queen of
Sardinia, who in the excavating season positively lets out
tracts of land to Roman dealers, who rifle the tombs of
everything convertible into cash and then cover them in
with earth. He describes such an excavation at Vulci : a
tomb being opened, nothing but pottery was found ; the
excavators, in their disgust, smashed and destroyed every-
thing, in spite of the English traveller's protests and entreaties.
This took place on the estate of the Princess of Canino.^
This happened in the sixties. In the seventies such
vandalism comes to an end ; but the publications do not
improve. For example, in the excellent article on the Tomba
Francois at Vulci which Korte published in the Archdo-
logisches Jahrhuch for 1897, the illustrations are poor: and it
was not until 1907 that Korte published, in the second
volume of the Antike Denkmdler, beautiful coloured repro-
ductions of the paintings in three tombs at Corneto, the
Tomba dei Tori, the Tomba delle Leonesse, and the Tomba
della Pulcella. A popular description by Mary Lovett
Cameron, Old Etruria and Modern Tuscany (London, 1909),
marks no progress as far as the illustrations are concerned,
and the text is amateurish and superficial.^ Von Stryk's
^ Cities and Cemeteries, p. 1 19. edition of Luigi Dasti's Notizie di Tar-
2 The same is true of the second quinia-Corneto, 1910.
4 MODERN LITERATURE
dissertation, Die etruskischen Kammergrdber, published at
Dorpat in 191Q, is unillustrated : the text is full of errors,
and in the discursive descriptions no account is taken of the
difference between the present state of the tomb-paintings
and that revealed by the earlier publications. Weege's above-
mentioned article on the Tomba delle Bighe and the Tomba
dei Leopardi only appeared in 19 16 : here at last the entire
material is utilized — the old drawings and descriptions,
modern photographs, and the author's own careful notes.
According to a prospectus recently issued, a larger work on
Etruscan tomb-paintings, by the same author, is shortly to
appear ; it will be awaited with interest.
It is to be hoped that Mr. Weege's book will supply a
want which is felt the more acutely when we consider the
growing interest in antique painting displayed in the last
decades. In 1904 Furtwangler, with the assistance of the
painter Reichhold, began the publication of the great work
on the masterpieces of Greek vase-painting {Griechische Vasen-
malerei), which was continued by Hauser : part of the third
volume is now published. In 1906 appeared the first instal-
ment of Paul Hermann's great collection of plates after
antique, especially Pompeian, wall-painting ; this work,
which is still in progress, contains beautiful reproductions
with and without colours {Denkmdler der Malerei des Alter-
tums). Finally, in 1914, Walther Riezler published a
splendid work on the white Attic lekythoi {Weissgriindige
attische Lekythen). But during these years nobody thought
of bringing to light the treasures hidden away in the sepulchral
chambers of Corneto, Chiusi, and Orvieto, although these
pictures were much more exposed to destruction than either
the vases in the well-guarded rooms of the Museums or the
Pompeian wall-paintings. For after heavy showers the floors
of the deeply sunk tombs of Corneto are under water, and
the damp then loosens the tufa of the walls so that the layer
of stucco, on which the colours are laid al frescOy peels off.
The heavy iron doors which the Italian Government has
placed before the entrances are worse than useless, because
THE NY CARLSBERG FACSIMILES 5
they shut the moisture in and prevent the tombs from getting
dry. If these doors had been placed at the top of the stairs
leading to the tombs, thus changing place with the lattice
doors which are now there, all would have been well.
At Corneto, it is moisture which demolishes the stucco
layer, varying from ^ to i cm. in thickness, and bleaches
the colours — red chalk, vermilion, lime-colour, ochre, cobalt,
and copper colours, at Chiusi it is the drought which most
frequently destroys the paintings, the colours here being laid
directly on the stone walls.
We have, therefore, every reason to be deeply grateful to
the late Carl Jacobsen who, at the beginning of the nineties,
had the Etruscan tomb-paintings facsimiled on their actual
scale. A somewhat similar experiment had already been
tried, and the result is a number of facsimiles preserved in
the Museo Gregoriano of the Vatican, but these are more
decorative than exact. At first, the Italian painters, to
whom Helbig, at the request of Carl Jacobsen, entrusted
the task — the first was Marozzi — evidently imagined that
Carl Jacobsen wanted these paintings as mural decorations
for his museum and had no artistic or scientific aim in
view, and letters from Helbig show that, as late as 1895, he
did not scruple to let Becchi, the painter, fill in a damaged
head from a picture in the Tomba dei Vasi Dipinti after
the reproduction in Monumenti, vol. ix (1870). The first
copies sent to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek were therefore
of the same ' picture-postcard ' colouring as the earlier ones
in the Museo Gregoriano, but gradually Carl Jacobsen
increased the rigour of his demands for conscientious exacti-
tude, and the facsimiles now on exhibition in the Helbig
Museum of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek are almost all
executed according to the more modern and better principles
of copying. To be sure, these copies still leave a great deal
to be desired in the way of scientific exactitude ; I have been
able myself to ascertain this by a careful comparison with
notes taken from the originals in the tombs of Corneto, and
Weege more especially has pointed out rather grave mistakes
6 FUTURE REPRODUCTIONS
in the copies of the paintings from the Tomba delle Bighe.
But these may be supplemented by a series of beautiful
coloured drawings dating from the last years of Jacobsen's
life : they are framed and constitute a whole picture-book
open to the public in the Helbig Collection. A large number
01 ground plans and decorative details are included in these
drawings, in addition to the most important of the paintings,
and here the copying has been executed with great accuracy.
The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, then, thanks to Carl Jacobsen,
is the place where investigators can most easily form an idea of
the development of Etruscan wall-painting, far more easily
than in Florence where the late Director, Milani, ordered
new copies which, in my opinion, are considerably inferior
to those of Carl Jacobsen. But for all that, the facsimiles of
the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek ought not to be the last word of
science on the subject. Mr. Weege proposes, as the method
of the future, the taking in the tombs themselves of gigantic
photographs on which careful painters might add the colour-
ing ; instead of two there will thus only be one possibility of
distortion, namely, in the colours themselves. But one might
perhaps go still further and take large chromatic photographs
which would fix both forms and colours for all time, so that
we might view the gradual destruction of the originals with
less dismay than at present.
A detailed estimate of the artistic significance and
properties of the Etruscan wall-paintings is not yet possible,
if only because no adequate pictures for reproduction exist.
What can be done — and what will be attempted in the
following pages — is to give an account of the content of the
pictures and of the main lines of their development. Even
that is not superfluous. Investigators have never really given
themselves time to enter deeply into the spirit and content
of these pictures, or to ask themselves the question which
arises, one may say, with every picture, namely, how far the
representation is a loan from Greek art and civilization, and
how far it bears the local Etruscan stamp.
Fig. I
WALL-PAINTING FROM THE TOMBA CAMPANA
Fig. 2
MAIN PICTURE IN THE TOMBA DEI TORI AT CORNETO
TOMBA CAMPANA AT VEII
II
The first stage of development is represented by the
Tomba Campana at Veii. This tomb was discovered in 1843,
and a good description of it is given by Canina in Antica
Cittd di Veii (1847), but it has never been published with
adequate illustrations. A new and thorough treatment of
the ornamentation and motives of its pictures is given in a
Leipzig dissertation by Andreas Rumpf {Die Wandmalereien
in Veii, 191 5). But this, too, is without illustrations. The
central doorway of the back wall is provided with an orna-
mental painted border and flanked by paintings in yellow,
grey, and red on a blue ground. The work is primitive.
The ornamentation is akin to that of Greek vase-painting of
the seventh century B.C. The pictures are purely decorative :
animals and fabulous animals such as lion, sphinx, deer, and
panther fill the surface side by side with lotus-flowers and
palmettes. There is no narrative element. To be sure,
Weege, like others before him, has tried to construe one of
the pictures (fig. i) into a mythological scene : the boy on
the horse, which is led by the bridle by a man walking behind,
is thought to be a dead man on his way to Hades, and the
man with the loin-cloth, carrying an axe over his shoulder, to
the left in front of the horse, to be the Etruscan death-god
and conductor of souls, Charun, to whom we shall return
later. Weege also thinks that the animal crouching on the
back of the horse is a hunting leopard. But, apart from the
rather puzzling question, what the hunting leopard has to do
with the ride to Hades, the animal is not a hunting leopard at
all : it is a feline animal with a short tail, while the hunting
leopard has a long tail. The animal was only placed there to
fill up the space, thus illustrating the poverty of ideas in
these pictures. Moreover, as the man with the axe is not
characterized as Charun, either by colour or by dress, it
seems unnecessary to force a mjrthological explanation. The
human figures in this picture, as in the Melian vases of the
8 TOMBA CAMPANA AT VEII
seventh centurj' B.C., are purely decorative : they ride when
the space above the back of the horse has to be filled in, and
they walk when a long, narrow field makes the human figure
more appropriate than a seated or walking animal as a means
of filling the space. The absurd alternation of colours within
the same figure, every single animal being coloured in com-
partments of yellow and red and having alternately red and
yellow legs, affords a good instance of purely decorative
conception and suggests the idea of woven tapestry. Hence
it is an all but obvious conclusion to imagine, as prototype
of this painting, some magnificently coloured wall-tapestry
imported into Etruria in the seventh century B.C. from Crete
or one of the islands in the Aegean Sea, to the vase-paintings
of which the ornamentation of the tomb shows close affinity.^
Thus there is in these pictures neither any action nor any
reference to death or the tomb. They serve as a decorative
ornamentation of the tomb-chamber, like the six painted
shields in the inner chamber of the tomb, which suggest
those ' brass circles ' mentioned by Livy (viii, 20, 8) as
common votive offerings in early Rome. We can imagine
the home of a rich Etruscan in the seventh century decorated
with similar frescoes : painted tapestries and painted shields
as substitutes for real wall-tapestries and metal shields.^ The
Tomba Campana is the most impressive but not the only
representative of this earliest class of tombs, in the ornamen-
tation of which only decorative considerations have been
kept in view. Tombs at Cosa, Chiusi, Magliano, and Caere
contain still more primitive paintings of the same sort, but
they are badly preserved and still more imperfectly described.^
^ Cp. Fr. Poulsen, Der Orient und tury B.C. The horsemen, in particular,
die friihgriechische KuTist, p. 128, where recall the frieze from Prinia in Crete,
I tried to prove that the pictures of the Bollettino d'Arte, 1908, p. 457 S.
tomb are influenced by the art and ^ Shields were also common mural
stj'le of decoration of the island of decorations with the early Greeks,
Cyprus. Rumpf {op. cit. 50) was cp. Poulsen, Orient, p. 77, and Al-
nearer the mark in perceiving the con- caeus, fragm 15 (Bergk).
nexion with the decorative art of Crete ^ See the summary account in
and the Cyclades in the seventh cen- Rumpf, op. cit. 61 ff.
TOMBA DEI TORI AT CORNETO 9
III
The next stage in the development is represented by the
Tomba dei Tori at Cometo, discovered in 1892 and admirably
published by G. Korte in Antike Denkmdler} The back
wall of the main chamber in this tomb has two doors, and it
is between these that the one large figure painting is placed,
again in such a way as to suggest a tapestry stretched on the
wall (fig, 2). But now the picture has a narrative content,
inasmuch as a scene from the Greek cycle of myths is depicted:
Achilles watches for the Trojan prince Troilus at a well.
Achilles, to the left, wears a crested Corinthian helmet,
sword, greaves, and red loin-cloth. Troilus is naked and
only decorated with armlets and elegant shoes. He wears
his hair long, according to Ionic fashion, and in his hand he
carries a goad (kentron). This is, as a rule, only used when
two horses are ridden, and the drawing shows traces of
double contours near the head and the right leg of the horse ;
it is probable, therefore, that two horses were originally
planned. In this picture also, the proportions of man and
horse are impossible, but progress is perceptible in the mono-
chromatic treatment of the body and legs of the horse. On
the other hand, the old manner of painting in stripes or
compartments is still retained in the running chimera in the
pediment above ; it also lingers for a very long time in the
pedimental figures of the following period. The style is
Ionic of the first half of the sixth century B.C. A truly
Ionian monster, created under Oriental influence, is the
human-faced bull in the pediment above the door, one of
the two bulls from which the tomb derives its name, and
which are omitted here because of the obscene groups on
either side of them. Other decorative details point to Cyrene
and Egypt, especially the characteristic frieze of lotuses and
pomegranates, which corresponds with the Gyrenaic vases of
the sixth century B.C., and the stylized flower-bed under the
1 II, Tafel 41, and Hilfstafel i-8.
2468 c
10 TOMBADEITORl
belly of the horse, which has its origin in Egyptian and its
parallels in Phoenician and in orientalizing Greek art.^ In
this tomb the painting is not executed al Jresco but in a
yellowish-white pigment which unfortunately scales off in
large flakes.
Thus in the Tomba dei Tori, besides a decorative treat-
ment of the wall surface with friezes, we have a main picture
with a mythological subject, painted in the Greek spirit and
perhaps actually executed by a Greek mural painter. We do
not find even the slightest allusion to death or entombment,
or the least trace of any Etruscan characteristics. The
inscription in the large frieze is of interest because it shows
the Etruscan language in its archaic form, with a rich vocali-
zation which must have made it much more euphonious than
the language spoken later, in the fourth or following centuries.
The inscription runs : ' arnth spuriana s[uth]il hece ce
fariceka,' and means, ' Aruns Spurinna monumentum sepul-
crale . . . condidit, adornavit,' or the like.^
IV
A CONSIDERABLE group of Etruscan tomb-paintings, dating
from the middle of the sixth century, show in their composi-
tion close connexion with Ionic vase-painting, especially with
the so-called Caeretan hydriae, while their main pictures tell
us something about the Etruscans themselves and their
conceptions of Life and Death and Eternity. Only in the
animal friezes beneath the painted roof-supports does the
old decorative conception of the human and animal figure
still linger ; elsewhere the pictures now have content and
meaning.
We may take the Tomba degli Auguri in Corneto,
^ Poulsen, Orient, p. 67. other inscriptions, and for numerous
2 I am greatly indebted to Professor linguistic suggestions on the general
O. A. Danielsson of Upsala for in- subject of my treatise.
formation about this as well as about
o
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TOMBA DEGLIA U G U R I ii
discovered in 1878, as our starting-point. There are coloured
drawings as well as full-sized facsimiles of its pictures in the
Helbig Museum.
The middle of the back wall of this tomb is occupied by
a painted door flanked by two men in white chitons and
short black cloaks lined with red ; on their feet are peaked
shoes. They raise both arms in a gesture of lament, ' beating
their foreheads ' as the ancient texts have it.^ With this
scene (fig. 3) the key-note is struck : the living stand at the
door of the tomb and moan for the dead, a subject specially
appropriate to the decoration of the walls of a tomb.
The scenes on the main walls are also associated with the
funeral ceremonies. On the right-hand main wall (fig. 4) a
boy is seen to the left in a white tunic with black dots, carrying
a stool and raising one arm and his face to a man who, dressed
in a red and brown cloak and brown shoes, seems to beckon
to the boy with his right hand, gesticulating at the same time
with his left. Between them a small figure is seated who
reminds one of the small boys in the Greek tomb reliefs
' weeping on their cold knees '. To the right is another man
clad in chiton and mantle, gesticulating violently with his
left hand, and carrying a crook in his right. Above him, and
above the excited man to the right, runs the inscription :
* Tevarath ', probably meaning umpire {^pa^evryj^, dycDvo-
BiTrjs). For now follow representations of athletic contests :
two wrestlers engaging in the initial grips, the elder bearded,
the younger beardless : between them are seen the prizes —
metal bowls ; these are supposed to be arranged in the
background, but owing to the lack of perspective they seem
to be in the way of the combatants. This scene throws light
on the preceding one : the man with the crook is evidently
not an augur, as originally conjectured because of the staff
and the flying birds, but the umpire who has to see that no
unfair tricks are used ; the other man is the spectator who
^ ITaieti' TO fieVcoira, Dionys. Hali- see Sittl, Gebdrden der Griechen und
earn, x. 9 ; ' frontem ferire ', Cicero, Rdmer, p. 21.
Epist. ad Attic, i. 1 ; for other instances
12 TOMBADEGLIAUGURI
has not yet seated himself, but beckons to the slave-boy to
bring him the stool on which he will sit down like the Roman
knights of later times who brought their own stools into the
orchestra of the theatre. On the other hand, the mourning,
crouching slave-boy seems to repeat the death lament of the
back wall. Here already, then, we can observe the curious
fragmentariness of the scenes in Etruscan art : they look as
if they had been cut out of more comprehensive wholes, and
put together without logical sequence. Clarity and unity are
wanting. There is not the sustained composition or the
pleasure in detailed narrative which are regular in Greek
and Egyptian art. The Etruscan artist is content with hints
and fragments.
To the right of the wrestlers, on the same main wall,
is a particularly interesting representation : beneath the
inscription Phersu, a man, dressed and masked like a punchi-
nello, is leading a dog in a long leash which is wound round
his antagonist and ends in a wooden collar round the neck
of the dog. The ferocious blood-hound has inflicted bleeding
wounds on the legs and thighs of the antagonist, and the
antagonist, whose head is muffled in a sack, is vainly trying
to disentangle himself from the leash and to hit the dog with
a club. The explanation of this exciting and brutal contest,
to which no parallel can be found in Greek art, is evidently
that Phersu tries to make his dog bite his antagonist to death
before the latter can get his head out of the sack and hit man
and dog with his club. If the club-bearer succeeds in freeing
himself from the sack and the dog, Phersu has only one
chance : to run away. As runner, he has his legs stiffened
with thongs, and in the much damaged fresco on the left
main wall of the tomb we see the flight of Phersu (fig. 5) and
(not reproduced) the club-bearer pursuing him. They are
separated by a pair of pugilists who are boxing to the accom-
paniment of flutes, again an evidence of Etruscan indifference
to incongruities in the composition. The escaping Phersu
is painted alone in another tomb at Corneto, the Tomba del
Pulcinella, the name of which is derived from this figure, but
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here he is placed beside a horseman (fig. 6), who represents
the equestrian processions at funerals, to which we shall turn
our attention later. The Tomba del Pulcinella, which was
discovered in 1872, also dates from the sixth century B.C.,
and like the Tomb of the Augur it bears the stamp of Ionic
art, especially in the receding contours of the crown of the
head and in the plump forms of the body.
In these two sepulchres, then, we are confronted with
representations which are associated not only with death
and the tomb, but also with Etruscan local customs and
national character. It is true that prize-fights and wrestling
contests in connexion with obsequies are known in the
Greek civilized world as well, for instance from the descrip-
tion in the Iliad of the funeral of Patroclus, and lingered for
a long time especially in the outskirts of the Greek world —
thus King Nicocles of Cyprus, in the beginning of the fourth
century B.C., honoured his deceased father with choral
dancing, athletic games, horse-races, trireme races .^ But we
know of no example from Hellas of a fight like that between
Phersu, accompanied by his blood-hound, and the muffled
club-bearer : a fight the attraction of which, apart from its
sanguinary character, evidently depended on the disparity
of the weapons, as it did in the combat between gladiator
and retiarius, the man armed with net and trident, in the
Roman arenas of a later day.^
From the Greek author Athenaeus,^ we learn that the
gladiatorial games originated in Campania, where they were
introduced as entertainments at banquets, but that the
Romans adopted them from the Etruscans. This tradition
is confirmed by the facts that the name applied to the leader
and trainer of the Roman gladiatorial school, lanista, is of
Etruscan origin, and that the person, who even in late Rome *
dragged the corpses from the arena, the so-called Dispater,
^ Isocrates ix, I . Cortsen,VocabulorumEtruscoruminter-
2 With reference to phersu, which is pretatio in Nord. Tidsskr. for Filologi,
supposed to be synonymous with and 1917, p. 174.
the origin of the Latin persona, see * iv. 153 f.
Pauly-Wissowa, vi. 775, and S. P. * TertulHan, Ad nation, i. 10.
14 GLADIATORS IN ETRURIA
was furnished with satyr-ears and a mask with savage features,
and carried a hammer, thus being a faithful copy of the
Etruscan death-god, Charun.^ Moreover, as the Etruscans
in the heyday of their glory, in the sixth and fifth cen-
turies B.C., also ruled over Campania, it is most natural to
attribute to them, and not to the Campanian Graeculi, the
doubtful honour of being the actual ' inventors ' of gladia-
torial combats. These combats were a piquant and exciting
substitute for actual human sacrifices in honour of the
deceased noble or the gods, and as one of the parties was
given a chance to save his life the practice may even be
considered an advance in humanity.
Etruscan obscurity and inconsistency lead to curious
confusion in the transition from mythological pictures to
funereal scenes. Thus we find on the front of an early
archaic Etruscan terra-cotta sarcophagus, now in the British
Museum,^ a representation in relief, manifestly inspired by
Greek mythology, of a battle scene with men and women as
spectators ; at one end of the sarcophagus, the left, leave-
taking before marching out to battle ; on the back, a ban-
queting-scene, evidently representing the funeral feast, since
the relief on the other end of the sarcophagus shows four
mourning women, two of them holding drinking-bowls in
their hands.
A GOOD idea of the different sort of athletic contests at
the great Etruscan funerals is given by the wall-paintings in
the Tomba delle Iscrizioni at Corneto, described and copied
by Stackelberg and Kestner in 1827,^ and represented in the
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek by facsimiles and coloured drawings
executed in 1907, after a chemical treatment of the plaster
stucco, which brought out a number of details more plainly.
^ Pauly-Wissowa, iii. 2178. Sarcophagiin British Mttseum, pLix-xi.
^B 630. Figured in Terra-cotta ^ Kestner, ^wna/ji (1829), p. loi fF.
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The pictures are of the same period as those of the Augur tomb,
and of similar style. The numerous inscriptions from which
the tomb has derived its title seem to be mostly proper
names. Each of the three wall-surfaces of this tomb, which
contains only one chamber, has a false painted door in the
middle. Of the first figures on the left main wall, two
pugilists, only very little is preserved (fig. 7). They are
contending, like the two wrestlers to the right of them, one
of whom has lifted the other from the ground, to the accom-
paniment of the flute-player who is standing between the
two groups. This and many other Etruscan paintings confirm
the statement of Aristotle ^ that the Etruscans made their
boxers perform to the sound of the flute. Flute-playing was
so popular that masters scourged their slaves and caused
their cooks to work in the kitchen to the sound of the flute ;
and here again the Romans adopted the Etruscan tradition
and gave their flute-players a recognized position in the
community, as is shown by the amusing story about the strike
of the Roman flute-players ^ : the flute-players left Rome in
disgust and went in a body to Tibur, and the only device the
Romans could think of was to make the excellent fellows
drunk and cart them back to Rome, where the citizens made
haste to confirm the ancient privileges of the flute-players
and to add several new ones in order to make the awakening
more pleasant.
On the other side of the false door the equestrian proces-
sion begins and is continued on the back wall to the central
false door (fig. 8). Four young naked horsemen, some of
them with staves in their hands, are received by a naked
youth who carries a palm-branch over his shoulder. Apart
from the nakedness, which must be attributed to the influence
of Greek art, this equestrian procession is genuinely Etruscan.
Appian derives the festive processions at triumphs and
funerals from Etruscan prototypes, while Dionysius of Hali-
carnassus finds their prototypes in Hellas. But it cannot be
denied that Dionysius's description of these pompae in early
^ Athenaeus iv. 154a. ^ Ljyy jx. 30. 5-10. Plutarch, ^efta/Jowtana, 55.
i6 TOMBADELMORTO
Rome ^ suggests Etruria : first came young horsemen, then
foot-soldiers ; after these, athletes with their sexual organs
covered (in contrast to Greek custom), then the tripartite
chorus of dancers in purple cloaks and bronze belts, then the
grotesque dancers, flute-players, lyre-players, and thurifers,
and finally the procession of chariots with the images of the
gods. In the following pages we shall make acquaintance
with all these groups in the Etruscan world of art.
The equestrian procession is presumably the preliminary
to a horse-race. The nobles of Etruria were celebrated for
their race-horses and often sent their chariot-teams to the
games in early Rome.^ It is a characteristic fact that one of
the few Etruscan words given by the Greek lexicographer
Hesychius is no other than the word for horse, Sa/^vos
according to the Greek version.^
To the right of the false door in the back wall three jolly
dancers are seen : the first has his brow wreathed, carries
a drinking-bowl in hand, and wears boots, red skirt, and
blue neckerchief. The figure is shown by the flesh tint to be
male, not female as stated in Carl Jacobsen's catalogue.
After him dances the flute-player, with red boots, blue loin-
cloth, and red chaplet, and last comes a naked dancing youth
with boots, necklace, and chaplet.
Dancers appear in a number of Etruscan tomb-paintings,
and abandon themselves to their gambols with a frenzy which
might seem incompatible with death and entombment. In
the Tomba del Morto at Corneto, dating from the same
period, we find traces of a pirouetting dancer close to the
couch of the dead and the lamenting mourners ; the dance
was thus as important as the funeral lament (fig. 9). The
finest representations of Etruscan mourning dancers are
found m the Tomba del Triclinio, which dates from the
beginning of the fifth century B.C. : the Ny Carlsberg Glyp-
^ Dionys. Halicarn. vii. 72-3. Nordisk Tidsskr. for Filologi, 1917 ;
^ Livy i. 35. 9. no doubt because he considers
^ Hesych. 5. v. The word is not Hesychius's statement insufficiently
mentioned in S. P. Cortsen's Voca- authoritative. Cp. Skutsch, Pauly-
bulorum Etruscorum interpretatio in Wissowa, vi. 775.
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TOMBADELTRICLINIO 17
totek contains several earlier, inferior facsimiles, made from
the copies in the Museo Gregoriano and only touched up at
Corneto by the painter Mariani ; ^ and some more recent ones
carefully executed on the spot (fig. 10). On each wall three
female and two male dancers are seen among trees ; fillets and
singing-birds appear in the foliage. The male dancers play
on lyre and flute ; the dancing-girls have castanets and the
foremost a strap or chaplet with bells over her shoulder.
Similar chaplets with bells are often seen hanging on the
walls in pictures representing the symposia in honour of the
dead (see below), and bear witness to the childish predilec-
tion of the Etruscans for gipsy-like noise and merry-making.
The most beautiful dancing-girl, however, in any Etruscan
tomb is the already mentioned ' bella ballerina di Corneto ',
discovered on a wall in the Tomba Francesca Giustiniani.
We give this figure, which has never been reproduced, after
the facsimile in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek which arrived
there shortly before the death of Carl Jacobsen and gave him
one of the last pleasures in his life (fig. 11),
When I examined the original in the tomb at Corneto
I made the following notes : the drapery (chiton), which is
ornamented with a pattern of dotted rosettes, is distinctly
preserved from the hips down to the elegant fluttering edge.
Much of the middle part of the body has been destroyed ;
the fluttering ends of the red scarf across the shoulders are
visible to right and left. The upper part of the body and the
shoulders are also well preserved. The right arm is raised,
and visible from shoulder to elbow ; a faint outline of the
left arm is also visible.^ Of the head, the brow, the beginning
of the nose, the ear, the green fluttering head-dress, the red
hair with a loosened tress in front of the ear have been pre-
served. To the spectator the picture still conveys an impres-
sion of joy, of graceful movement, and of filmy fluttering
draperies.
^ Helbig's letters of June 21 and gives more than I at any rate could
December lo, 1895. see: on the other hand, less as far as
^ Thus the facsimile at this point brow and nose are concerned.
246S D
i8 ETRUSCAN DANCE AND SONG
Here also we find Etruscan tradition continued on Roman
soil, not only in the dancers of the festival processions, but
in the tradition that Etruscan dancers, ludii or ludiones, were
imported to Rome to dance at the great festivals. The Greeks
compared the Roman reel to the Dionysiac ' cancan ', a-CKLvvi<;,
while its Roman name is tripudium ; it was danced at every
period of Roman history by the Salii, the ancient priesthood
of the Roman war-god, on the chief festival of the god,
March 19. According to Livy (vii. 2. 4-7) the earliest
Roman poetry, the coarse Fescennines, originated in the text
which accompanied the dance of the ludiones, and the fact
that the dancers during the Fescennines daubed their faces
with minium supports the theory of Etruscan influence, which
also makes itself felt in the custom observed by the Roman
triumphators, who in the earliest times daubed their whole
bodies with minium. For we know that the Etruscans coated
the images of their gods with minium at their festivals, and
that the Romans gave the ancient terracotta statue of the
Capitoline Jupiter a similar coat of ' war paint ' at the high
festivals, a task which it fell to the censors to superintend.^
The red minium was meant to heighten the natural red-brown
hue of the men ; it produced an artificial virile complexion,
just as white lead and chalk served to emphasize the pale
feminine hue.^
The primitive nature of the verses connected with these
dances is shown by the song of the Salii, the burden of
which is the five times repeated ' triumpe ' (jump !) and the
text of which runs : ' Help us, lares, let not the evil disease
fall upon any more of us. Mars ! Be satisfied, cruel Mars !
Jump on to the threshold. Cease jumping. Help us,
Mars ! * At the triumphs also, ' carmina incondita ', as Livy
tells us, were sung (iv. 20. 2), and we venture to think that
Etruscan poetry was no better than this, and that the dis-
appearance of the texts, which accompanied the dances, is
^ Plutarch, Aetia Romana 98. women used white lead as paint :
* Plautus, Truculentus 290, 294, Lysias i. 14 and 17.
Mostellaria 259 fF. In Greece also,
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TOMBADELLEISCRIZIONI 19
no great loss. Varro mentions tragedies in the Etruscan
language, but they were undoubtedly versions of the Greek
ones, eyen worse than those made for the Romans by Livius
Andronicus. Apart from some religious and a little his-
torical literature, and a number of recipes for the gather-
ing of simples, capable of rousing the admiration of the
Greeks for ' the descendants of the Tyrrhenians, the people
skilled in medical lore ',^ no tradition of any Etruscan intel-
lectual life in writing or poetry has been handed down to
posterity.
We pass on to the right main wall in the Tomba delle
Iscrizioni (fig. 12) where dancers in a row with drinking-
bowls in their hands alternate with servants carrying wine in
large bowls. That the funeral dance was animated by free
indulgence in wine is often exemplified in the tombs. In the
Tomba delle Leonesse, named after the beasts of prey in the
pediment, which are really hunting leopards, a red-brown lad
to the right is dancing with a girl ; to the left is a woman
with castanets, and in the centre, flanked by a flute-player
and a lyre-player, stands the wine-bowl wreathed with fresh
leaves (fig. 13), ' the wine-bowl filled with joy,' in Xeno-
phanes' words. Evidently the Etruscans drank heavily to
celebrate the memory of their dead, as Xenophon relates of
another barbarian tribe, the Odrysians.^ To the right of the
false door of the same main wall in the Tomba delle Iscrizioni
(fig. 12), a man in a loin-cloth with a laurel branch in each
hand is greeting another man, who carries chaplets and rests
one leg on the cushions of a couch. Laurel branches con-
stantly recur in the reliefs of the Etruscan cinerary urns,
where the death lament round the bier of the deceased is
reproduced, and it seems probable that laurel branches were
carried round the house and used for wall decoration in the
house of the deceased on the funeral day, for the purpose of
purification. This decoration of the walls, then, would be
the subject of our picture, together with the other preparations
^ Quotation from Aeschylus by opinion): History of Plants ix.. 15. i.
Theophrastus (who endorses the ^ Hellenka iii. 3. 5.
20 LAUREL DECORATIONS
for the funeral, as shown by the paintings.^ Perhaps it was a
general custom of the Etruscans to decorate their walls on
festival days with laurel branches, just as the Egyptians
decorated theirs with lotus, and this would often account
for all the foliage which appears in the backgrounds of the
paintings alternating with suspended chaplets, even where
the action — the death lament (fig. 9) or the symposium-
takes place indoors. In other cases, however, as in the Tomba
dei Tori (fig. 2) and in the Tomba del Triclinio (fig. 10), there
is no doubt that real trees and open-air scenes are represented,
but even there the chaplets are often seen hanging — on the
wall. Again a proof of the want of clarity in Etruscan art !
Trees, however, in the background of scenes with figures are
also found on South Italian vases of the same time, and thus
seem to be a common Italic trait.
VI
Contemporary with the group of the Tomba degli Auguri
and the Tomba delle Iscrizioni is the Tomba del Barone,
discovered at Corneto in 1827 ^^^ named, as already men-
tioned, after Baron Kestner. After the paintings of this tomb
Stackelberg executed a fine water-colour, and Thiirmer a
number of drawings, now in the University of Strasburg.
The style — both in the shape of the heads and in the treatment
of the draperies — is still Ionic, but the proportions are more
slender, probably owing to Chian or Attic influence.
Composition and technique are both unique in the
paintings of this tomb. We content ourselves with repro-
ducing one main wall, the left (fig. 14), where a black horse
with light grey hoofs, mane, and tail, is led by a man wearing
red boots and a brown mantle lined with green. He is
^ Cp. Tacitus, //iy/or. iv. 53, on the dicabatur evinctum vittis coronisque ;
inauguration of the rebuilt Capito- ingressi milites, quis fausta nomina,
lium : ' spatium omne quod templo fdicibus ramis.'
Fig. 13. BACK WALL IN THE TOMBA DELLE LEONESSE
After a drawing in the Helbig JNIuseum
Fig. 14- LEFT MAIN WALL IN THE TOMBA DEL BARONE
TOMBA DEL BARONE 21
speaking with one hand raised to a woman in a long grey
chiton, a brown mantle lined with green, and a brown cap.
Then comes a man with green boots leading a brown horse.
Similar quiet pictures are found on the other two walls
of the tomb ; on the back wall a man is standing with his arm
round a young flute-player's neck, and is greeted by a woman.
The dress of the women is Etruscan ; the subjects also are
probably Etruscan — ^the preparations for the pompa and the
dancing feast. But everything breathes coolness and calm,
and we miss the usual jollity. The technique is equally
remarkable. It is not the usual fresco painting : experiments
have been made with size-paint, that is, an attempt at painting
in distemper on the plaster stucco covering the walls. The
attempt has failed ; the colour has run in large blotches.
These two characteristics of the artist of the Tomba del
Barone are of great interest because the German archaeologist,
Gustav Korte, has demonstrated the existence of marks made
by Greek artisans on the walls of this tomb. It was not in
Etruscan, but in Greek letters that the artist indicated the
amount of his day's work, with a view to his wages. The
explanation, then, seems to be the following : a Greek
decorator was charged with the task of ornamenting the walls
of the tomb, and he did it, as far as the dresses are concerned,
according to local tradition ; but he experimented boldly with
a new technical process, the success of which was prevented
by the dampness of the rock-wall ; and he composed his
pictures with a grandeur of line and a tranquillity in execution
which make one think of the pediment of a Greek temple.
In the light of this it is easier to realize how much of the
Etruscan temperament there really is in the other paintings,
all Greek influence on style notwithstanding. It must be
noted here that artisans' marks are the only written evidence
left by the decorative painters of Etruria ; artists' signatures
are unknown, whether in Greek or in Etruscan. The Etruscan
nobles, like the Roman later, evidently employed Greek
artists, but granted them no social position.
22 TOMBADELLEBIGHE
VII
In the next period the predominant stylistic influence is
Attic. A whole group of tombs dates from about 500 b. c. :
they are thus contemporaneous with the severe red-figured
vase-paintings. Very Attic and, at the same time, like a
complete pictorial procession, representing everything which
took place at a great Etruscan funeral, is the Tomba delle
Bighe, previously mentioned and now published by Weege.
As the pictures in this tomb are clearer and more complete
than most Etruscan paintings, we will take some of them as
a starting-point for a closer examination of the facts of
Etruscan life.
There are two friezes on the three walls of the tomb : a
narrower and lighter above ; and a broader one below, in
which the figures are painted on a deep red ground ; the
height of the friezes is respectively 36 and 90 cm., and they
are separated by a broad, coloured band. The narrow frieze
with the dark figures on light ground still reminds one of the
black-figured Attic vases, whereas the lower purple frieze, in
which the skin of the men is reserved in a somewhat lighter
red, that of the women in white, recalls the red-figured vase-
paintings, all differences notwithstanding.
On the right-hand main wall (fig. 15), in the broad frieze,
men and women are dancing in honour of the dead among
laurel branches. There are the usual ecstasy and the familiar
animated gestures with the big fan-like hands, reminding one
of the figures in archaic Greek vase-painting and plastic art.^
Especially splendid is the female flute-player who turns
round as she dances, her light chiton and red cloak fluttering
about her ; she can almost compare with ' la bella ballerina *.
The dancing-women all wear the high Etruscan wreathed
cap, the so-called tutulus, which in the Tomba delle Iscrizioni
is also worn by a male dancer. We meet with it again in
Etruscan terracotta sculpture. The fashion is of Oriental
^ Cp. Fr. Poulsen, Delphi, fig. 44.
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THE TUTU LUS— CHARIOT RACE 23
origin, and goes back, ultimately, to the pointed * sugar-loaf
hat ' of the Hittites. It probably reached Etruria by way of
Cyprus, where it is frequently seen in reliefs of the seventh
century B. c. In Etruria the pointed woollen cap became
part of the national dress .^ Rome of course adopted the
headgear and preserved the Etruscan tradition in the priest-
hoods ; a purple tutulus adorned the Roman Flaminicae, and
certain secondary priests wore a tutulus down to the time of
Tertullian.* In early Rome all women wore the tutulus, and
under it a head-cloth such as is shown in Etruscan terracottas
(fig. 16) ; this is clear from a description of a Roman mourning
scene in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (xi. 39), where the women
tear their many and various fillets and hair-ornaments off
their heads ,^
The dancing scene, in the painted frieze referred to above
(fig. 15), ends at the sideboard on the left, which bears a
number of metal bowls : a cup-bearer, partially obliterated in
the original, is just putting down a vessel. The wine to inspire
the dancers is ready.
In the narrow frieze — the most beautiful and most care-
fully executed of those in the tomb, but very badly copied in
the facsimile of the Glyptotek — ^we see the preparations for
a chariot race. The horses are being led out and harnessed
to the chariot. We reproduce, after Stackelberg's drawing,
the most interesting part of the frieze (fig. 17), in which three
young men are busy harnessing two horses to the light, two-
wheeled chariot, the Biga. The chariot is represented in
foreshortening, and the shaft is lifted up by a naked boy.
The young men have each one foot strongly foreshortened.
^ Daremberg-Saglio, s. v. Tutulus. catinum), corresponding to the Etrus-
Fr. Poulsen, Der Orient und die friih- can bucchero vases, at sacrifices.
^necA. ^M«i^ p. 97, fig. 99, and p. 107. Livy i. 24. 9 : Juvenal vi. 343. Cp.
Martha, Uart etrusque, p. 306, fig. 206 Miiller-Deecke, Die Etrusker ii. p. 275.
(Cyprus). Antike Denkmdler iii, pi. i. ^ nrhg Latin name of the head-cloth
* In the same manner the Roman is struppus, and from that a festival at
priests used flint knives in their cult, Falerii, struppearia, derived its name,
and their razors had to be of copper, It comes from Ionia, and is mentioned
and, as late as Roman imperial in the poems of Sappho (xetpo'/xaKrpov).
times, they used black vessels {nigrum
24 TOMBADELLEBIGHE
We find here the same experimentation with this new and
difficult problem, as in the Greek vase-paintings of about
500 B. c, in the vases of Euthymides and Euphronius. The
horse to the right is blue, that to the left grey, both have red
hoofs and red harness, and two youths, with a sort of shawl
round their loins, are busily engaged with them, striking
them on the flanks to get them into place. These two excel-
lent figures are quite misdrawn and misconstrued in the
Ny Carlsberg facsimile, the draughtsman not having realized
that they are seen from behind.
We have, therefore, preparations for a chariot race ; in
a wall-painting in the Tomba del Morente at Corneto we
have a still earlier phase represented, the lassoing of the
horse which is to be harnessed (fig. 18) ; here the horse is
red, with blue mane and tail. The disposition of the colours
is no more naturalistic in Etruscan wall-painting than in the
pediments of Greek temples : in applying the colours, the
painter's object was purely decorative.
After the preparations comes the ceremonial parade of
the racing chariots past the stands ; three chariots are seen
in a row (fig. 15) : the first has not yet begun to move,
the horses are pawing the ground impatiently, and the groom
is standing at their heads trying to pacify them ; the second
chariot has already started, and the team of the third chariot
is going a little faster, a fine crescendo which reminds one of
good Greek art rather than of Etruscan. To the left are the
stands for the spectators, which are continued on the back
wall ; similar stands are seen in the corner where back wall
and left main wall adjoin. We give, after Stackelberg's
drawing, the two parts from the first-mentioned corner
(fig. 19). On elevated platforms, bounded above by lines
evidently meant to indicate curtains which might be drawn
before the ' box ' against sun or heavy showers, men and
women are seated and show their absorption in the games
by their eager gestures. The foremost woman to the right
actually greets the procession of chariots with her raised
hand. She is a matron wearing a shawl (epiblema) over the
Fig. i8. WALL-PAINTING FROJM THE TOMBA DEL MORENTE
THE LASSOING OF THE HORSE
Fig. 19. PART OF THE SMALL FRIEZE IN THE TOMBA DELLE BIGHE
After Arch. Jahrb. 19 16
Fig. 20. PART OF THE TOMBA BELLA SCIMMIA
AT CHIUSI
THE AUDIENCE 25
arms, and the back of her head, and under that a tutulus. Next
to her sits a young girl with a tutulus, noble in bearing and
gesture like a young goddess. Then follows a varied company
of youths, women, and a bearded man. The young man, who is
represented partly frontal with his chin resting on his hand
and the head and left leg frontal, is of special interest. The
problem of foreshortening has been very neatly solved. Under
the wooden floor of the stands the common folk are disporting
themselves, some of them engrossed in anything but the
games.
In order to understand the significance of this representa-
tion one has to realize that such detailed pictures of spectators
at athletic games are unknown in Greek art. The nearest
parallel is the assembly of the gods, the Olympian specta-
tors, in the frieze of the Treasury of the Siphnians at
Delphi,^ and in the Parthenon frieze, between which the
Tomba delle Bighe chronologically occupies an intermediate
position, about twenty-five years later than the former, and
about fifty years earlier than the latter. At the same time we
learn that female spectators were also present ; this was not
so at the Olympic games, but seems to have been a common
Italic custom. The stands, too, appear typically Italic ;
on such tKpM the spectators were seated at those athletic
games and contests which in earlier times, according to
Vitruvius (v. i), were held in the market-places of Italian
towns. Amphitheatres were not known till the first cen-
tury B.C., but if one imagines these market-places on festival
days with such wooden stands built up on all four sides, and
these stands curved round at the corners in order that the
spectators might see better, one can understand how the
shape of the amphitheatre originated.^
Within the sphere of Etruscan painting also, this is the
only large representation of an audience. Elsewhere the
artist limited himself to the individual figure as representative
of the spectators ; thus in the Tomba della Scimmia (the
^ Fr. Poulsen, Delphi, fig. 44.
^ Cp. Daremberg-Saglio and Pauly-Wissowa, s. v. Amphitheatrum.
2468 £
26 TOMBA DELLA SCIMMIA AT CHIUSI
Monkey Tomb) at Chiusi, the only spectator is a lady dressed
in black and sheltered by a sunshade ; she is seated on a high
chair without a back (diphros), her feet on a footstool (fig. 20).
The tomb was discovered in 1846 by Fran9ois. The pictures
are executed in a thin colour, probably a sort of water-colour,
applied directly to the stone without an intermediate layer
of stucco ; a similar technique is employed in the other and
larger tomb at Chiusi, the Tomba Casuccini. The four
walls are decorated with scenes from the race-course and the
palaestra. Behind the lady on the wall which is reproduced,
we see two men in rapid motion and with ample gestures
probably intended to render the bustle and hurry at the
funeral, which is also represented, as we have seen, by one
of the figures in the Augur tomb (cp. fig. 4). The sunshade
carried by the ' widow ' was an Oriental fashion, but in the
fifth century B.C. the women of Greece had adopted it,
as is shown by the Knights of Aristophanes (1. 1348
o-KiaSeioi'). To the left the usual flute-player is standing,
and the round dais in front of him is not an altar, but, as
Milani was the first to point out, the small table on which
prizes were placed.^ Next comes a girl with a censer on her
head. She is generally taken to be a female juggler, but
carrying a tall object on one's head is still a common practice
with the women of the South, and censers (thymiateria), as
we learn from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, were always
carried at the ' pompae ' in early Rome ; at the high festivals
they were placed in front of the Roman doorways.^ They
were sometimes of costly material.^ But our woman seems
to be standing on a platform, and the near presence of the
flute-player, and the turning of her body and position of her
arms, seem to indicate some difficult dance performed with
the big object borne on her head in a small, limited space ;
hence a kind of old Etruscan dervish-dance of which we
have no other knowledge. The two figures next to her are
a big and a small man who are cooling their bleeding noses
^ Museo archeol. di Firenze, p. 303. ^ Cicero, In Verrem iv. 46. See
^ Livy xxix. 14. 13. also Karl Wigand, Thymiateria.
TOMBADELLEBIGHE 27
with sponges : the artist gives the atmosphere of the scene
after the fight. On one of the other walls in this tomb the
boxers are ready for action, raising their cestus-bound fists
against each other, one hand closed for attack, the other open
for defence, as frequently described in the ancient authors.^
Cicero tells us that boxers sighed and groaned, in order to
increase the force of the blow.^ These cestus fights must have
been terrible. The guard, nowadays less, was then more
important than the blow, for it was too dangerous to take the
risk of being hit by one's opponent when attacking him,
even if one was confident that one's own blow would be the
harder ; one had to play for an opening, at the same time
guarding against the single blow which was sufficient to
knock a man out. Finally, on the extreme left of the picture
(fig. 20) we meet with a scene which is repeated in another
picture in the same tomb, as well as in the Tomba del Tri-
clinio : a rider seated sideways and at the same time leading
another horse. The race with a led horse was an Oriental
custom, and appears for the first time on the Phoenician metal
bowls of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. This seat,
sideways on the horse, is of Scythian origin, and in Greek art
usually characterizes the Amazons. The Etruscans, with
their passion for difficult games, evidently combined the two
in order to make the races as exciting as possible.
In the small frieze on the back wall of the Tomba delle
Bighe we find a rider with a led horse, dressed in tunic and
helmet, and seated astride ; we reproduce part of it after
Stackelberg's water-colour (fig. 21). To the left of him we
see a naked man standing on one leg and nursing his raised
left leg. It was formerly conjectured that he was playing
leap-frog with the young man planting the jumping-pole in
the ground behind him, but it is not usual to play leap-frog
on one leg, and Weege has pointed out the same position in
athletic scenes on Greek vases and supposes it to be a kind
of preparatory exercise. His supposition is correct : any
^ For instance in ApoUonius Rho- ^ Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes
dius, Argonautica ii. 68. ii. 56.
28 PALAESTRA LIFE
modern acrobat would recognize it as one of his exercises ; the
contraction of the muscles by nursing right and left knee in
turn. Acrobats practise this exercise when travelling, to keep
themselves fit when they are unable to train.
VIII
We will not dwell on all the forms of wrestling contests
and boxing matches which appear in the small frieze of the
Bighe tomb, but only describe a part of the left main wall,
which presents an important and difficult problem (fig. 22).
To the left of a young man in a himation (not reproduced)
we see the lower part of a statue of a deity, who would seem,
from the faint traces in Stackelberg's water-colour, to have
wings on his ankles. If so, it is Hermes, the protector of the
palaestra, and the black object in front of him is a small altar.
On the other side of the altar a boy, accompanied by one of
the caretakers of the palaestra, clad in a blue mantle and
carrying a knotted stick, is standing with his hand raised.
This usually indicates the adorer praying to the divinity for
victory in the contest. An absolutely Greek palaestra interior!
We have now escaped from the sphere of the customary rude
games held at the Etruscan funerals, and the question arises
whether the Etruscan knew real palaestra life of the Greek
type or not. In the Oscan towns of Lucania and Campania
the youths were devoted to Greek sports, and Weege is
therefore inclined, in view especially of this picture, to
believe the same of the nobles of Etruria at the height of
their glory in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. But this is
a dangerous inference. Wherever else we meet with Etruscan
athletic types they are rough and lumbering of build and
evidently professionals. In the Tomba delle Bighe a Greek
artist has been at work ; this was already admitted by
Stackelberg and Kestner, and the same view is held in
our own times. Although the artist has complied with the
demands of his patron more fully than the Greek artist in
PALAESTRA LIFE 29
the Tomba del Barone, who only troubled himself to do so
as far as dress was concerned, but for the rest painted entirely
in the spirit of his native country, Greek influence, neverthe-
less, has penetrated everywhere. It is seen, for instance, in
the incongruities of the picture : the spectators in the corners,
suggesting actual athletic games; then this interior from a
Greek palaestra, which might be interpreted, however, as
part of a public contest ; next comes the prize table, as in
the Tomba della Scimmia, but on both sides himation-clad
boys are seen, loitering like typical figures of the everyday
life of the palaestra, who have absolutely nothing to do with
the concentrated excitement of the sports in the arena. To
the left of the low table we see a little armed dancer, with
helmet, shield, and spear, in Greek nudity, not fully dressed like
the gladiator in the Tomba della Scimmia ; his lance is bent
zigzag- wise, apparently an Etruscan peculiarity. With the
Greeks also, the armed dance — the pyrrhiche — formed part
of the sepulchral festival, especially in Cyprus and Crete,
where it was called prylis ; ^ and the custom may very well
have been adopted by the Etruscans.
IX
Similar incongruities, due to Greek artists, or at any rate
Greek art, having set a Greek stamp on the wall-painting of
Etruria, meet us in the representations of symposia. Again
we can take the Bighe tomb as our starting-point (fig. 23).^
Three festive couches are seen with two young men on each.
^ Aristotle, /rog-m. 519 R. Scholia ready badly damaged in 1837. A copy
to Homer's //ia<^ xxiii. 130. A similar of it, now in the Vatican, is mere
dancer or armed runner appears in the fiction, and has unfortunately served
Tomba Casuccini at Chiusi ; both as basis for the large facsimile in the
remind us in posture of the Tiibin- Glyptotek. On the other hand, its
gen armed runner (Bulle, Der schone damaged state is correctly represented
Mensch, pi. 89). in the small drawing of the tomb in
2 The large frieze with dancing the Glyptotek.
scenes on the left main wall was al-
30 TOMBA DELLE BIGHE SYMPOSIUM
The youths are naked to the waist, and have sumptuous gold
necklaces, red or blue mantles, and chaplets on their heads.
Some of them hold flat drinking-bowls, some eggs, and others
have branches in their hands — all this, however, we only
learn from the old copies : they are reclining on metal
couches, whereas the tables in front of them are wooden, as
is clearly proved by the colours employed. We may wonder
that the couches are of metal, for according to the literary
tradition the first metal couches came to Rome as late as
187 B.C. Nevertheless, ivory and golden couches are already
mentioned by Plautus ; this may, however, be due to the
Greek text on which he based his comedy {Stichus 377).
The Etruscans, at any rate, knew bronze couches at least
three hundred years earlier, and this is corroborated by the
find of an actual bronze banqueting-couch in a tomb at
Corneto.^ The couches are covered with many-coloured
woven or embroidered bolsters and cushions ; these also
are mentioned in the Roman comedies as ornaments of
couches.^ Ducks appear beneath the couches, and the guests
are attended by three naked lads : a flute-player, a boy
holding a branch, and another with a ladle, which are wrongly
reproduced in the Ny Carlsberg facsimile as a staff.
The symposium has begun, the tables having been cleared.
Only young beardless men are seen feasting together, and
nothing informs us who they are or why they are drinking.
All that is certain is the luxury and pomp which seem to have
characterized Etruscan houses and which are especially mani-
fest in the jingling necklaces and the material and appointment
of the festive couch.
New problems arise with the large symposium scene in
the Tomba dei Leopardi at Corneto, which was discovered in
1875 and has now been described in an exemplary manner
^ Bliimner, Romische Privatalter- referred to by Plautus (Pseudolus
turner, p. 118. 145 ff.). They usually came from
^ On Etruscan cinerary urns and Alexandria and were decorated with
terracotta sarcophagi the covers are pictures of wild beasts, whereas the
as a rule strongly scalloped. These bed coverlets proper came from Cam-
are presumably the tonsilia tappetia pania.
Fig. 24
BACK WALL IN THE TOMBA DEI LEOPARDI
After Arch. Jahrb. 1916, pi. 9
Fig. 25
MARRIED COUPLE ON AN ETRUSCAN CINERARY URN
TO MBA DEI LEOPARDI— HUNTING LEOPARDS 31
by Weege in the article mentioned above. The pictures are
among the best preserved in the whole of Etruria, and date
from about the same time as the Bighe tomb, about 500 B.C.
The tomb takes its name from the two almost life-sized
leopards in the pediment (fig. 24). They have been neatly
proved by Weege to be hunting leopards. As early as the
days of ancient Egypt leopards were trained for hunting pur-
poses, and hunting leopards appear in Greek vase-paintings
and Etruscan wall-paintings, for instance, in the earlier
tombs such as the Tomba delle Leonesse and the Tomba del
Triclinio, where the animal lies beneath a couch. In the
Middle Ages the hunting leopard was still trained in the
East, and is therefore depicted in the paintings of the Renais-
sance— for instance in the pictures of Gentile da Fabriano
and Benozzo Gozzoli — as seated on the cruppers of the horses
behind the Magi or their servants.^ In modern India leopards
are still trained to hunt.
Beneath the two long-bodied hunting leopards we see the
main picture of the back wall (fig. 24) representing a sympo-
sium. On the couch to the left two youths are reclining, on
each of the two others a youth and a young girl.^ The young
men are attired in mantles, the girls in chitons and mantles ;
all wear garlands. In their hands they hold either chaplets,
drinking-bowls, or round objects usually supposed to be
eggs. Similar ' eggs ' appear in numerous Etruscan ban-
queting-scenes : in the Tombe del Triclinio, del Letto
funebre, della Pulcella, degli Scudi, &c., and as egg-shells
are frequently found in the tombs at Corneto, and eggs must
therefore have been offered to the dead ^ — as the most
nourishing of foods, and one which stimulates in particular
^ These cheetahs were brought alive I owe this reference to Mr. G. F. Hill,
to Italy, if not actually used for hunt- ^ Dennis and Stryk are mistaken in
ing by the princes of the Renaissance, speaking of a youth and a girl on the
For among Pisanello's drawings in the left couch ; the error is due to the
Codex Vallardi in the Louvre is a fine damaged condition of the colouring,
study of one of these animals from the ^ Cp. Juvenal, Satires v. 82, where
life ; it wears a collar round its neck, eggs are referred to as a common
showing that it was led on a leash, course at funerals.
32 TOMBADEILEOPARDI
the procreative force — it is not improbable that the old
interpretation is the correct one. Weege supposes them to
be ballot-balls used to decide who should be the master of
the symposium (symposiarch), but this was usually decided
by throwing dice. A third conceivable interpretation, which
I think might be acceptable in certain cases where a man
and a woman hand each other these round objects, is that
they are rings. In Plautus's Asinaria (778) it is spoken
of as typical of two young lovers reclining on one couch at the
symposium that one of them gives the other his or her ring to
look at.
Beneath and above the banqueting-couch we find the
previously noted laurel branches — not laurel trees as Weege
calls them — the familiar adornment of the walls. The guests
are served by two naked pages : one of these, who holds
a jug, beckons to the other, who holds a small jug and
a strainer, to make haste. How necessary it was to strain the
wine is seen from the description of the elder Cato. The
Latin word for cleaning the wine-jars of the grape-skins
deposited by the wine is deacinare}
X
This wall-painting is apparently a faithful copy of a
Greek painted representation of a symposium with hetaerae,
and this is also Weege's view of the scene. In his opinion,
those who take part in the drinking bouts of the young men
are not married or respectable women, but hetaerae. It
seems to me that such a representation in a tomh would
argue a complete dissolution of family relations in ancient
Etruria, whether we choose to interpret the pictures as scenes
from life, or as an expression of the wish that the next life
might take the form of nothing more or less than a revel with
hetaerae. Weege maintains, further, that hetaerae reclined
at table, whereas wives sat with their husbands : but this is
^ Cato, De re rustica 26. In the Greek pictures of symposia also the slave
boy carries a strainer, -ndixos.
THE HETAERAE 33
contrary to the express literary tradition, according to which
the Greeks were shocked because the Etruscan women
reclined at table with men ' under the same coverlet *. The
earliest authority for this statement is Aristotle ^ and, accord-
ing to this and other accounts of the fourth century B.C., the
free intercourse between men and women gave rise to much
immorality, the women abandoning themselves to the strange
men with whom they reclined .^ It would have been absurd
for the Greeks to taJce oifence at this if it did not apply to
free-born women of good family, but only to hetaerae, who
in Hellas did exactly the same. How things were with the
Greeks in this respect is made sufficiently clear by a passage
in the orator Isaeus * : ' No one would dare to serenade
married women, and neither do the married women attend
banquets with their husbands, nor do they consider it proper
to partake of meals with strangers, especially chance acquam-
tances.'
With this severe Athenian custom we must compare these
scandalized Greek outbursts, and, at the same time, we must
remember that in the fourth century B.C. Etruscan civilization
and morals were already on the decline, so that an original
latitude, which in the beginning of the fifth century was
natural and did not affect the morals of domestic life, may
at this time have been abused. Incidentally, we are able to
ascertain the degree of exaggeration in another Greek account
of the same time concerning the luxuriousness of the Etrus-
cans * : ' They reclined on flowered cushions drinking out of
sumptuous silver bowls and attended by servants in costly
dresses, sometimes by naked zconien.* In the Etruscan paintings
there are numerous naked pages in attendance, just as in the
Greek symposium pictures, but not a single naked handmaid.
As to the question whether respectable women reclined or
^ Athenaeus i. 23 d. OntheEtrus- - Athenaeusxii. siyd. Cp.Dionys.
can custom of reclining at table, like Halic. ix. i6.
the Greeks, and unlike the men of the ^ Isaeus iii. 14.
Homeric age and later the Mace- * Athenaeus iv. 153 d. (=Timaeus,
donians, who sat, see Athenaeus i. fragm. 18 in Miiller, Fragmenta histor.
17 f, 18 a. Graecorum).
a468 F
34 THEHETAERAE
sat at table, invariable rules did not exist in Etruria any more
than they existed in ancient Rome, where we know that
Jupiter alone reclined at the lectisternia (the sacred banquets
given by the state) whereas Juno and Minerva sat ; further-
more, in the last century of the republic, respectable women
sat with the men at banquets, while brides reclined.^ The
practice of brides reclining can hardly, however, be accounted
for except as a case of adherence to an ancient and honourable
custom which was superseded by later and severer notions.
Etruscan works of art, however, give sufficient information
to confute the whole of Weege's hetaera theory. Man and
woman are often seen reclining together on Etruscan sarco-
phagi and cinerary urns, and on the face of it it would seem
improbable that a man would have himself pictured on his
sarcophagus with a hetaera. Dr. S. P. Cortsen kindly informs
me that this view is confirmed by the fact that two of these
cinerary urns with a pair of figures on the lid have an inscrip-
tion in which the word tusurthi or tusurthir occurs — one of
the few Etruscan words the signification of which is certain :
it means ' spouses '.^ And if we look at the type of womanhood
represented in several of the recumbent couples on the later
urns, when realism prevails in Etruscan portrait sculpture,
the appellation hetaera becomes as preposterous as that of
matrons is certain (fig. 25).^
But proof is furnished by the tomb -paintings themselves.
In the Tomba degli Scudi at Corneto, discovered in 1870,
and, to judge by the style, dating from the end of the fifth
century b. c, the wife (as might be expected) is pictured
sitting with her husband, who is reclining on the couch with
^ Friedlander, Sittengeschichte Rotns scandaleuses. Of equal value is his
i. 472, 478, 493 f. information that the Sybarites loved
^ Corpus inscriptionum Etruscarum, the Etruscans because of their luxu-
3858, 3860. riousness (Athenaeus xii. 519 b). It
' The Etruscan character for im- is regrettable that Theophrastus' work
morality is chiefly due to Theopompus on the Etruscans is lost ; it would
(Jragm. 222 in Miiller, Fragm. hist, have provided information of quite
Graec. i. p. 315), but he gives similar a different character. (Cp. the Scholia
descriptions of the Thessalians, and to Pindar, Pythia ii. 3.)
seems to have specialized in chroniques
Fig. 26. PICTURE FROM THE TOMBA DEGLI SCUDI AT CORNETO
Fig. 27. PICTURE FROM THE TOINIBA DEGLI SCUDI
After a coloured drawing in the Helbig Museum
TOMBADEGLISCUDI 35
a drinking-bowl in his left hand, his right resting on the
woman's shoulder (fig. 26). According to the inscription the
man's name is Velthur Velcha, that of the woman Ravnthu
Aprthnai (the family name is in the nominative and is a
woman's name, the Latin Abortennia ; so the family of the
mother was the more distinguished). The figure and the
diadem of the woman recall those of the Hera Borghese
and determine the date of the tomb. On the table in front
of the couch are a bowl, a cake (pyramts), and a heap of
fruits : or they may be the ' ball-cakes ' {spirae or spaeritae)
referred to by Cato {De agricultura 82). At the foot of
the couch a lyre-player and a flute-player accompany the
meal with music, recalling a statement of Cicero's ^ that at
banquets in early Rome the sound of stringed instruments
and flutes was deemed indispensable. On the whole, it
might perhaps be as well to abandon all theories of the austere
morals of early Rome. The patrician families of the first
centuries of the republic undoubtedly lived a life which in
pomp and luxury vied with the life of the nobility of the
Etruscan towns. Again, in the painting on the back wall of
this tomb, where the recumbent man is a priest (cechaneri),
the wife is seated with her husband (fig. 27). As to the priest-
hood, it must be borne in mind that the priestly office was
hereditary in the Etruscan noble families. The statue of
Juno at Veii, for instance, might only be touched by a priest
of a certain family.^ It was especially the art of divination,
however, which was reserved for the noblemen and their
wives.' Even when the Romans had conquered Etruria they
continued to support the efforts of the Etruscans to confine
initiation into the art of divination to the nobility. Even
Cicero, in his book on the ideal State, maintains that omens
and presages must be submitted to haruspices, and the nobles
of Etruria must teach the ' disciplina '.
In the pictures of the Scudi tomb the wife, as we have
1 De oratore iii. 197. can women versed in divination is the
^ Livy V. 22. 5. wise but guileful Tanaquil, who played
3 The most famous of all the Etrus- a political part in Rome : Livy i. 34.
36 TOMBADELL'ORCO
seen, is sitting. But in the Tomba dei Vasi Dipinti, besides
a man and a woman, two children are present at the sympo-
sium, which would be inconceivable in a hetaera picture ; and
in a picture in the front chamber of the Tomba dell' Oreo at
Corneto, discovered in 1868 and dating from the same period
as the Scudi tomb, there are traces of a man and a woman
reclining together, and the inscription informs us that the
woman is a free-born woman named Velia — the family name
has unfortunately been destroyed — and that she is married
to Amth Velchas, a descendant of one of the noblest families
in Etruria (fig. 28). With this, then, the last and final proof
of the untenability of the hetaera theory has been adduced :
this woman, whose head is one of the most beautiful in the
sepulchral chambers of Etruria (fig. 29), reclines with her
husband on the couch in the picture in the tomb, even as she
was buried with him in the tomb itself. A failure to appreciate
this fact would imply a complete denial of Etruscan family
feeling and pride of race.
The dancing women, on the other hand, for instance, the
woman in the Tomba delle Leonesse already cited above,
and another, still more wanton, who in the Tomba degli
Bacchanti foots it with a fat dancer, must be interpreted
as hetaerae. They illustrate the phrase of Plautus : ' pro-
stibile est tandem ? stantem stanti savium dare amicum
amicae ? ' To the same category of hired dancers belongs
the man to the left of the one who is dancing with inverted
cithara.^
Generally speaking, what has made doubt or error possible
in the matter is the fact that the pictures, as we have already
said, in form suggest Greek pictures of hetaerae ; symposia
of any other kind between men and women were unknown in
Hellas. And to what extent the influence of Greek art has
prevailed is shown by the picture of a momentary phase of
emotion in the Tomba Querciola, where a couple reclining on
the couch are kissing each other, a motive as suitable to a
^ T^ Ki$dpav aTp(\lfai, like Apollo in the contest with Marsyas (ApoUo-
dorus, Bibliotheca i. 4. 2).
'^6
Fig. 28. ARNTH VELCHAS AND WIFE ON COUCH
PICTURE IN THE TOMBA DELL' ORCO
After a coloured drawing in the Helbig Museum
Fig. 29- HEAD OF ARNTH VELCHAS' WIFE
FROM THE TOMBA DELL' ORCO
Fig. 30. BACK WALL IN THE TOMBA DEL VECCHIO
SYMPOSIA 37
Greek hetaera picture as it is incongruous in a picture repre-
senting family life after death .^ Another source of error is
the pronounced sensualism of these pictures ; in a sepulchral
painting as early as the sixth century, the main picture of the
Tomba del Vecchio, we see on a banqueting-couch, under
the wreaths and chap lets with bells hanging on the wall, a
hoary old roue in vivacious conversation with his beautiful
young wife who holds a garland, a hypothymis, under his
nose (fig. 30) .^ This picture is typically Etruscan in its
combination of wine and love. * As soon as we had eaten,'
sings the Greek poet Dromon,' * the slave girl removed the
tables ; one brought us water for washing, and we washed
ourselves ; then we seized again the wreaths of violets and
bound our brows with garlands.' The Etruscans seem to have
followed the Greek rules minutely, but like the Egyptians
they let the free-born women partake of the festivity of the
symposium itself.
XI
But we can go still further and establish beyond the
possibility of doubt that where men alone are gathered at
the symposium of eternity, the pictures represent the heads of
the families who ordered the tombs and had them decorated.
To be sure, the pictures of the sixth and the beginning of
the fifth centuries do not give us any information as to this —
even the symposium in the Tomba delle Bighe is without
inscription ; but in this respect also the sepulchral paintings
become more communicative after the middle of the fifth
century. In the Tomba Golini at Orvieto, discovered in 1863
^ In the same picture we also find them round their necks, as we learn
a representation of a true Greek from the poems of Anacreon and Al-
motive, kottabos. Another momen- caeus ' (Athenaeus xv. 678 d). Cp.
tary motive appears in the Tomba 'P\utaTch,Quaest.conviv.m.probl.i,2-
d' Orfeo e d' Euridice at Corneto In Ionia the women perfumed their
(Monumenti v. pi. 17), a slave pulling bosoms and wore wreaths of flowers
off his master's slippers. round their ' delicate necks ' , as Sappho
" Hypothymides were first used 'by says (Athenaeus xv. 674 c-d).
the Aeolians and lonians who wore ^ Athenaeus ix. 409 e.
38 TOMBAGOLINIATORVIETO
and called after its discoverer, and, to judge from its style,
contemporary with the Tomba degli Scudi and the front
chamber of the Tomba dell' Oreo, we see in the symposium
on the back wall (fig. 31) two men on the same couch drinking
to the accompaniment of the two familiar musicians. Beneath
the couch we can make out dimly a servant, and a hunting
leopard, probably feeding ; both have their names attached :
that of the animal is KanJkru. In Egyptian reliefs also, dating
from the Fifth Dynasty, we occasionally find names attached to
the domestic animals depicted, for instance ducks and pigeons.
Of the two men reclining on the couch the foremost holds
a drinking-bowl and an egg. In the Ny Carlsberg facsimile
he is represented as beardless, but no doubt wrongly. It is
an elderly man ; his face is one of the earliest examples of
naturalism in Etruscan portraiture. The other, full-bearded,
holds a flat, fluted vessel without foot, presumably one of the
celebrated Etruscan golden vessels which are more minutely
characterized in a symposium in the Tomba della Pulcella ;
they were even introduced into Athens, where, side by side
with Corinthian works in bronze, they formed part of the
decoration of a wealthy house, and they are eulogized in a
poem by Critias,^ one of Athens' finest beaux esprits.
In this painting in the Tomba Golini the inscriptions
give us much valuable information as to the connexion
between the two persons.^ Above the first we read : ' Vel
lecates arnthial ruva larthialisa clan velusum nefs marniu
spurana eprthnec tenve mechlum rasneas cleusinsl zilachnve
pulum rumitrine thi ma[l]ce del lur.' In translation the
text runs : ' Vel Lecates, Amth's brother,^ son of Larth,
and descendant of Vel. He held the offices of Maro urbanus
{spur means town) and Eprthne (secular official title) and
was Zilach (dictator) of the Etruscan people in Clusium . . . '
^ Athenaeus i. 28 b. part incorrectly copied in the Ny
^ Corpus imcr. Eirusc. 5093-4. Carlsberg facsimiles.
I am indebted to my friend, Dr. ^ That ruva means brother seems to
S. P. Cortsen, for help in the interpre- be unanimously accepted, though it
tation of this and other Etruscan in- only appears in the two inscriptions of
scriptions. These are for the greater this tomb.
Fig. 3t. SYMPOSIUM IN THE TOMBA GOLINI AT ORVIETO
Fig. 32,. WALL-PAINTING IN THE TOMBA GOLINI
38
TOMBAGOLINI 39
The rest is unintelligible. It is interesting in the inscription
to come across the name by which the Etruscans called
themselves, rasneas ; Dionysius of Halicarnassus (i. 30)
was therefore justified in saying that the Etruscans called
themselves Rasenas. The name Larth is common in Etruscan
inscriptions. The Romans knew it and called the well-known
Etruscan king by his full name, Lars Porsenna (in Etruscan,
Larth Pursna).^
We now turn to the inscription above the bearded man
on the same couch ; his name is Arnth Leinies, son of Larth,
and descendant of Vel ; his official titles follow, and the
inscription ends : ' ru[va] l[ecates velus] amce,' i. e., was
brother of Vel Lecates. Thus we have two brothers reclining
on the same couch, and the inscription makes it probable
that the other symposiasts, too, are not chance revellers, but
members of the same family, united in the picture as they
were in life and in the grave.
In the same tomb, to the left of this scene, we see
a table, bearing several metal vessels, a thymiaterion, and
an ivory box for incense, and flanked by two candelabra
with lighted candles stuck into birds' beaks (fig. 32). The
Etruscans were considered inventors of the art of candle-
making and taught the Romans to manufacture different
kinds of candles, from big wax candles — candelae and cerei —
to cheap dips — sebaceae. The Italic peoples used candles
and candlesticks until Roman Imperial times, though in the
last centuries they also had oil lamps, the manufacture and
use of which they had learned from the Greeks ; the oldest
clay lamps found in the northern part of Italy date from
about 300 B.C. 2 To the left of the table is seen a naked
slave with a jug and a dish ; to the right a young man in
a light-coloured, sleeved chiton, who has been conjectured
1 The name Pursna or Pursena has, i ; Pauli, Altital. Studien, iv. 64 fit.
however, never been found in any ^ With reference to the use of tapers
Etruscan inscription. The Etruscan at the bier in antiquity see Rushforth,
Lar or Larth has nothing to do with Journal of Roman Studies, v. 1915,
the Roman Las or Lar. Cp. Schuize, p. 149 ff.
Zur Geschichte latein. Eigennamen, 85.
40 TOMBA GOLINI
to be another servant. But again the inscription affords
positive information : ' Vel leinies larthial niva amthialum
clan velusum pnimaths avils semphs lupuce * ; i.e.* Vel
Leinies, Larth's brother, son of Amth and descendant of
Vel ; he died {lupuce) at the age of 7.' ^ So the boy is son
of the hindmost man on the banqueting-couch and belongs
to the noble family interred in the tomb.
XII
Corresponding to the lassoing of the horse in the Tomba
del Morente, as a preparation for the chariot race, we find
in the Tomba Golini pictures of the preparations for the
banquet which is celebrated in the pictures mentioned above.
In one of the pictures we see cattle, venison, and poultry
hanging in the larder, in another the cooking in the kitchen
itself (fig. 33) ; like everything else in Etruria, it is accompanied
by the flute. To the left of the flute-player a woman is
struggling with a sideboard piled with food ; to the right
a naked slave with a loincloth is working at a small table,
using two small implements rather like plummets. Various
interpretations have been advanced : that he is kneading
dough, or grinding colours ; the latter explanation, how-
ever, is improbable in a kitchen scene. Besides these
Dennis proposes a third possibiUty — that he is chopping
vegetables, but he dares not commit himself to a decision.
The table itself, at which the slave is standing, seems to
have a raised edge, and thereby recalls the elder Cato's
recipe for the preparation of cheese cakes and puff^s ^ :
' Tzkt a clean table, a foot broad, surround it with an edge
(balieus), and then mix honey and cheese on it.' For puffs,
directions are given to belabour the dough with two sticks
or staves (rudes). After all the procedure here is somewhat
^ Cp. Vilh. Thomsen, Remarques sur 1899, no, 4, p. 391.
la parente de la larigiie dtrusqiie, Bulk- ^ De agricultura 76 and 86.
tin de FAcadimie royale de Danemark,
Fig. 3 3
KITCHEN INTERIOR IN THE TOMBA GOLINI
Fig. 34. PAINTING IN THE TOMBA DEL LETTO FUNEBRE
After a coloured drawing in the Helbig Museum
KITCHEN SCENES 41
similar, only that the dough is kneaded with pieces of metal
and not with staves.
In these scenes from kitchen and wine-cellar, where the
wood is being chopped,^ where the cooks are swinging the
saucepans or working at the range ,^ where young slaves are
struggling with sideboards covered with drinking- vessels, the
inscriptions contain the names of the slaves. Men desired
to be served in the after-life by the same skilful slaves as
in the present, and it was therefore the custom in later
times to add the names. This reminds one of the Egyptian
tomb-reliefs, where sometimes the serfs and the slave girls
are designated only by the name and mark of the estate,
so that in a way each of them represents one of the estates
of the deceased lord, whereas in other cases they have their
proper names attached and survive as personalities in the
after-life.
XIII
Thus we see a slow transformation taking place in the
ideas which inspired the Etruscan tomb-paintings. In the
Tomba del Morto and the Tomba degli Auguri, the repre-
sentation of the death lament showed plainly that the main
theme was the festival in honour of the dead ; and the
memorial feast itself should probably in most cases be recog-
nized in the banquet accompanied by the symposium or —
as in the Tomba delle Iscrizioni — the preparations for it.
This conception is also clearly expressed in the sepulchral
paintings of the fifth century B.C., such as the Tomba del
Letto funebre, where the main picture (fig. 34) represents
an enormous couch with a footstool in front ^ ; on the tall
^ Cp. Plautus, Pseudolus 158 'te inter tot ignes coquos.*
cum securi caudicali praeficio pro- ^ Footstools were also used in
vinciae.' Rome for mounting the high couches.
* Cp. Seneca, Epist. 114. 26 'ad- Yziro, De lingua Latina v. 168.
spice culinas nostras et concursantis
2468 G
42 TOMBADELLETTOFUNEBRE
pile of bolsters and coverlets rest two pairs of cushions, each
of them supporting a green chaplet encircling a pointed cap
(tutulus). Green festoons and a long red cord hang on the
walls : to the right of the couch are two symposiasts and two
slaves ; the slaves face the big central couch, and hold one
an egg, the other a loaf in their raised hands. To the left
of the picture are the flute-player and the sideboard with
vases. Here we get an idea how a lectisternium was spread
in honour of the dead, in connexion with the symposium at
a memorial feast. The dead are represented by their head-
gear ; to that the slaves to the right are offering sacrifice,
to that the flute-player to the left sounds his notes. How
deeply, in this direction also, tradition influenced the
Romans, and how long the practice lingered, is seen from
the description which the satirist Persius gives (iii. 103) of
a noble Roman lying in state :
Hinc tuba, candelae, tandemque beatulus alto
compositus lecto crassisque lutatus amomis
in portam rigidas calces extendit : at ilium
hesterni capita induto subiere Quirites.
And then the horns, the candles ! and the dead,
Smeared with thick balms, lies stiff on lofty bed,
Heels pointing doorwards, till he 's borne away
By new-capped citizens ^ of yesterday.
But the pictures in the Tomba Golini seem to indicate
that the symposium is not only a ceremony on the funeral
day or at memorial feasts, but that the purpose is, by means
of the painting as well as by the undoubtedly splendid
accessories of the tombs, which were rifled and removed
long ago, to secure to the dead or the whole of the family,
who in course of time were interred in the tomb, a happy
and festive existence hereafter ; the same idea as in the
Egyptian tomb-reliefs, the object of which was to safeguard
the deceased against ' the second death ', that is, annihilation.
And just as the Egyptian tomb-reliefs extend to all aspects
^ i. e. slaves made free by his will, and entitled to wear the cap of liberty.
ETRUSCAN IMPERIALISM 43
of life in order that the dead may enjoy without restriction
the sight of everything which made his Hfe rich and festive,
from the industry of the slaves and artisans occupied in
his service to his own boating and hunting expeditions in
the papyrus thickets of the Nile, so the Etruscan sepulchral
paintings have a further object and treat subjects which are
only intelligible if the end in view is to procure for the dead
a full enjoyment of the delights of life, and which cannot
in any way be associated with funeral or funeral feast. This
applies especially to the hunting pictures of the sixth and
fifth centuries B.C., found respectively in the Tomba della
Caccia e della Pesca and in the Tomba Querciola.
XIV
In the older group of tombs of the latter part of the
sixth and the earlier part of the fifth centuries B.C. we find
a bright and cheerful delight in the material pleasures of
life, and a clear confidence in the belief that the race, whose
means are sufficient to provide and adorn a sumptuous
sepulchral chamber, will also be permitted to enjoy all this —
from wine and women to hunting and sanguinary games —
in the hereafter. Thus it is not for nothing that these tombs
synchronize with the time of Etruscan imperialism. Previous
to this, the maritime power of Etruria had made it dreaded
and hated by the Greeks, whose ships were exposed to
seizure and piracy as often as they ventured across the ' Tyr-
rhenian Sea', so that the Greeks had only one colony on
the north coast of Sicily, and had great trouble in keeping
up communications with the Campanian Kyme and with
Massilia.^ * The savage Etruscan ' already appears in post-
Homeric poetry, where Circe bears Odysseus two children,
Latinus and Agrius (the savage), who represent the two
1 Strabo vi. p. 410 ( = Ephorus, mologist Philochorus even derived
fragm. 2 in Miiller, Fragmenta historic, the word ' tyrant ' from Tyrrhenians
graec. i. p. 246). The ingenious ety- (Philoch. fragm. 5 in Miiller, op. cit.).
44 THE POWER OF ETRURIA
principal races of Italy, the Latins and the Etruscans. At
length, in 474 B.C., the Kymeans, in alliance with Hieron,
the ruler of Syracuse, succeeded in gaining a sea victory
over the Etruscan fleet, which Pindar has celebrated in the
first Pythian Ode (i. 72 ff.), and after which Hieron sent to
Olympia a bronze helmet with an inscription recording the
victory, now in the British Museum. This defeat was the
first warning that the Etruscans had reached the zenith of
their power, but as late as the latter part of the fourth century
their piracy was still dangerous and troublesome to Greek
shipping, as is seen from a passage of Aristotle and an inscrip-
tion of 325-324 B.c.^ As a bulwark of their maritime power,
as early as the sixth century they had conquered Corsica,
and on land they ruled from the plain of the Po, which they
likewise conquered in the sixth century, to the southernmost
part of Campania, where they made Capua itself submit to
their power .^ Cato was justified in saying that almost the
whole of Italy in the days of old had been ' in the power of
the Tuscans ',* and when Sophocles * would enumerate the
districts of Italy he mentions only three : Oinotria (South
Italy), the Tyrrhenian, and the Ligurian land. When the
Athenians during the Peloponnesian War undertook the
desperate campaign against Syracuse, they allied themselves
in 415 with the Etruscans, whose auxiliaries were amongst
the bravest in the Athenian offensive force. ^ In the period
of the wall-paintings in question, Rome herself was also
made subject to them and had to pay contributions to the
powerful Etruscan confederation, after the king of Clusium,
Porsenna, had seized the city in 508 B.C. As is well known,
attempts were made by later historians to gloss over this
capture of the town, and the honorary decrees of the senate
to Porsenna are described as voluntary, but tell quite plainly
their own tale of subjection.^ Against the background of
^ Dittenberger, Sylloge imcriptio- * Dionys. Halic. i. 12.
num Graecarum,^ 305, with note i. ^ Thucydides vi. 88, and vii. 54-5.
2 Polybius ii. 17. Livy v. 33. 7-8. ® Dionys. Halic. v. 26, 35, 39.
8 Origines 62.
ETRUSCAN INFLUENCE IN ROME 45
this event the contemporary Tomba della Scimmia at Chiusi
acquires a new interest ; it was constructed for one of those
families which took part in the victory over Rome. But
previous to this, the names of the Roman kings : Lucius
Tarquinius and Tarquinius Superbus — ^Tarquinius is the
Etruscan Tarchna ^ — bear witness to the dependence of
Rome, which is also evident from the permanent Etruscan
occupation of the Janiculum. It is quite possible that the
expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus does not mark the fall of
the national monarchy, but was simply an attempt to throw
off the foreign yoke, an attempt which led to Porsenna's
occupation of the city two years later and thus did not bring
about the emancipation of the Romans.^ It is in this period
of dependence that the Etruscans left their mark on the laws
and customs of Rome, that the three oldest Roman tribes,
Ramnes, Titles, and Luceres, got their names, which, as
stated by Varro,' on the evidence of an Etruscan tragedian
Volnius, are Etruscan, a view shared by the modern philo-
logist Wilhelm Schulze.* The insignia also of the Roman
officials, such as the curule chair and the toga praetexta,*
and the twelve consular lictors with the fasces,^ are rightly
traced back to Etruria. For the Etruscan confederation
consisted of twelve towns, and each of these chose a king
who appeared at the gatherings followed by a lictor, and
only when they chose a common overlord and war-leader
could he appear with twelve lictors. It is therefore rather
improbable that the Roman kings appeared with twelve
lictors in their train ; more probably this large retinue only
became the privilege of the consuls after the suppression of
Etruria. But it was upon the nobility of Rome that those
years of Etruscan predominance left their deepest impress,
and it has thus been possible for Wilhelm Schulze, through
his investigations of Etruscan and Latin proper names, to
^ Schulze, Zur Geschichte latein. Livy i. 13. 8.
Eigennamen, p. 95 f., 262 fF. * Cp. E. Kornemann, Klio xiv.
2 Dionys. Halic. iii. 45, 47 fF. 1914-15, p. 190. ^ Livy i. 8. 3.
^ Varro, De lingua Latina v. 5 ; * Dionys. Halic. iii. 6i-2.
46 ETRUSCAN NOBILITY AND CLIENTS
throw a remarkable light on the earliest history of Rome
and to prove that a great number of the oldest patrician
families of Rome were descendants of the Etruscan ruling
race, and that intermarriage with Etruscans, and Etruscan
influence on Rome, persisted down to the end of the Roman
republic.^ It is also beyond doubt that the peculiar Roman
system of patron and client, by which clients attached them-
selves to a nobleman as followers {cluentes), added his name
to their own, and paid him dues in peace time, though they
were originally immune from military service,'' was of
Etruscan origin, nay, was the essential feature in the structure
of the Etruscan community. In course of time the Roman
clients became liable to military service, obtaining at the
same time civic rights, and it is presumably this fact which
accounts for Rome's final victory over the Etruscans, whose
proud Lucumones reserved to themselves both civic privileges
and military skill, and were therefore doomed to extinction
when luxury and effeminacy had sapped their strength.
But at the period of the tombs in question the blood of
the nobility is still healthy and is in no need of regeneration.
This is the nobility whose long lances controlled Italy, and
whose cavalry was so terrible in onset.^ The pictures of the
tombs show them at the death lament, at feasts, and on
hunting expeditions, at symposia, where men and women
freely indulge in wine and love, and finally in the Tomba
delle Bighe as spectators seated on the stands. On the other
hand, the horsemen, the dancers, the dancing- women, and
the athletes are certainly of lower extraction, hired servants
like the corresponding performers in Rome, perhaps, to some
extent, clients.
1 Wilhelm Schulze, Zur Geschichte ^ Dionys. Halic. ii. 8, lo.
lateinischer Eigennamen. Abh. der kgl. ^ Livy iv. i8. 8. Cp. ix. 29. 2,
Gesellsch. der Wissensch. zu Gottingen, where the Etruscans are described as
Phil.-hist. Kl., Neue Folge, Bd. 5, the most dangerous enemies of the
No. 5, p. 62 ff. Romans.
DECLINE AND FALL OF ETRURI A 47
XV
But domestic and foreign enemies destroyed this race
of rulers. At the beginning of the fourth century they
were attacked simultaneously by the Gauls from the north,
by the Samnites ^ from the south-east, and by the Romans
from the south. The Gauls inundated for some time the
whole of Etruria and presently captured Rome as well, but
were driven back again to North Italy. The Samnites seized
Capua ; but a far heavier blow was the loss of the great city
of Veii, the southernmost city of Etruria proper, which was
captured by the Romans in 396 B.c.^ In spite of the alliance
with Carthage, the maritime power of the Etruscans also
declined in the course of the fourth century, but it was not
until the third century that they received the death-blow
at the hands of the Romans and Latins. That they were
still dangerous antagonists at the beginning of the third
century may be seen from Livy's account, but at the end
of the century, during the second Punic war, their rebellious
spirit was easily quelled, and even Hannibal could not tempt
them to unite in revolt.^ At that time the country was still
rich, as is plainly shown by the requisitions for Scipio's
army.^ It was not until the following century that Etruria
sank into deep poverty ; in the time of the Gracchi the
country was almost a waste.* Plautus describes the Etruscan
people as very immoral ; in the Cistellaria (562) the poet
speaks of those who procure their dowry ignobly, like the
Tuscans, by selling their bodies, and in the Curculio (482)
the Etruscan quarter of Rome is referred to as ' inhabited
by persons who sell themselves '. Then followed in the first
century B.C. the military colonies of Sulla,® which gradually
Romanized the country. Inscriptions, especially from the
borderland of Umbria, which had been partly Etruscan, bear
^ Livy iv. 37. 1-2. ^ Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus 8.
'^ Livy V. 22. 8. ^ As a punishment because the
3 Livy xxvii. 21. 6 ; 38.6. country had joined the party of
* Livy xxviii. 45. 14-18. Marius. Plutarch, Marius 41.
48 DECLINE AND FALL OF ETRURIA
ample witness to the way in which the language changed
even within the old Etruscan families. About the middle
of the first century parts of the country were ravaged by
P. Clodius Pulcher and his bands of soldiers.^ Then comes
the foundation of new military colonies by Caesar and,
finally, the complete Romanization of the country under
Augustus. Propertius ^ describes, not without pathos, the
extermination of the last Etruscan strongholds during the
Perusian war in the year 40 B.C. : * eversosque focos antiquae
gentis Etruscae '.
The knowledge of the Etruscan language was preserved
all through antiquity by the Etruscan soothsayers. The
emperor Claudius was versed in Etruscan, and delivered
a long address in the Senate about the preservation of the
old Etruscan ritual against the invasion of new, oriental
elements. The other emperors had, as a rule, an Etruscan
soothsayer in their suite, whom they consulted before taking
any important step, and this custom survived down to the
introduction of Christianity. Julian the Apostate was accom-
panied by hosts of Etruscan soothsayers, who, however,
undoubtedly read the sacred books in the Latin transla-
tion by Tarquitius Priscus,^ and, as late as 408, we learn
that Tuscan soothsayers and scribes still existed. If any
of them at that time could still read the language, then
Etruscan, as a dead and sacred language, had survived the
disappearance of the people by about half a millennium.*
^ Cicero, Pro Milone 26, 74, 87. ^ Thulin, Pauly-Wissowa, vii. 2434.
^ ii. 1 . 29. The later authors speak * The best summary view of the
of nothing but the corpulency and Etruscan civilization is still to be found
imbecility of the Etruscans. Catullus, in Ottfried Miiller, Die Etrusker, in
Carm. 39. 21. Virgil, Georg. ii. 193 ; the second edition by Deecke.
Aen. xi. 732. Diodorus v. 40.
Fig. 35. DEMON IN THE TOMBA DELL' ORCO
49
TOMBA DELL' ORCO 49
XVI
To this long, sad period of national decline the later
group of Etruscan tomb-paintings and reliefs on cinerary
urns form a remarkable and melancholy accompaniment.
The continuity is unbroken ; the new creeps in, at first,
without superseding the old subjects. This is especially
clear in the front room of the Tomba dell' Oreo, which
dates from the latter part of the fifth century, and from which
we reproduced the beautiful married couple at the symposium
(figs. 28, 29) ; in the same sepulchral chamber we see in a
corner, beneath a finely stylized vine, a terrible death demon,
with large wings and a shock of wildly fluttering reddish hair,
which is sharply outlined on a blue background as if it were
surrounded by a halo. His beard is pointed, his nose termi-
nates in an eagle's beak ; over his shoulder a snake rears
itself, and the latchets of his shoes are snakes. His dress
consists of a sleeved chiton with belt and shoulder-straps,
and in his hand he carries a torch or a hammer. The eyes
roll horribly in the bluish face ; the colour of the skin
recalls the blue-bottle fly (fig. 35).
This death demon is painted isolated, unconnected with
the subjects of the rest of the paintings, and could indeed
be explained away as a decorative figure, created, to be
sure, by an imagination inflamed with terror. But in the
third room of the same tomb, the pictures of which belong
to the transition from the fifth to the fourth century, a similar
demon of the nether world is already represented in action
(fig. 36). The inscription gives his name, Tuchulcha ; he
has asses' ears, two snakes rear themselves like horns above
his brow, and with a huge snake he threatens a long-haired
youth who sits sorrowful on the rock, with a himation round
his loins ; his name, according to the inscription, is ' These '.
He is the Greek Theseus, and the young man opposite
to him is Pirithous ; the motive is their sufferings in the
2468 H
50 UNDERWORLD SCENES
Underworld, where they had ventured down in order to ab-
duct Persephone. But there broods over the scene a sinister
spirit which is not Greek. Thus we see behind the rock
on which Theseus is seated a loathsome snake with winged
head, and the remains of a blue demon with staff and chiton,
a kinsman of Tuchulcha. The appearance, to the left of
this weird phantasmagoria, of the peaceful sideboard with
its fine metal bowls ^ and with a handsome naked slave as
cup-bearer in front of it, has undeniably a somewhat odd
effect. This is a reminiscence of the old joyous symposium
scenes, and a remarkable witness to the lack of clearness in
the Etruscan mind and to the fragmentary character of
Etruscan pictorial art. A similar mixture of everyday life
and myth would be inconceivable in Egyptian or in Greek art.
Similarly, in the Tomba Golini, we see the side-table
and the slave in immediate continuation of the picture
representing the two enthroned rulers of the Underworld —
Hades and Persephone (inscriptions : Eita and Phersipnai).
Hades has a wolf-helmet and a snake-sceptre and is caressing
Persephone, who has a bird-crowned sceptre in her left hand,
and rests her right hand on the knee of Hades (see above
fig. 32). Her dress, her face, and her yellow hair under the
golden diadem are all splendidly painted.
In later Etruscan paintings we come upon two new
groups of motives — fantastic pictures of the Underworld, and
scenes from Greek mythology. Sometimes they mingle as
in the Theseus and Pirithous scene and in the pictures of
Hades and Persephone. Hades and Persephone recur in
a painting in the third chamber of the Tomba dell' Oreo
(inscription : Aita and Phersipnei), where weird mists roll
about them, and a figure with three heads, Gerun, is stand-
ing before their throne (fig. 37). It is the Geryon of the
Greeks, but he is not the cowherd on the far-distant island
Erythra, but a warrior in complete armour who seems to be
receiving the commands of Hades. Evidently the Etruscans
^ Cp. for the well-appointed table {Menaechmi 102) : ' tantas struices
Plautus's description of a liberal host concinnat patinarias.'
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TOMBA DELL' ORCO 51
have made him the servant and champion of Hades. Per-
sephone has snakes in her hair and a curious collar which
we meet again on the chitons of women in white Attic
lek3^hoi of the fifth century b. c.^ Hades wears the traditional
wolf-helmet. It is remarkable that a head exactly similar
to that of Hades is found among Michelangelo's sketches
(fig. 38), which seems to indicate that Michelangelo some-
where in Tuscany saw and sketched an old Etruscan tomb.
To be sure, the snout of the animal reminds one of a pig's,
but the long ears and the fur are those of the wolf.
In the other paintings of the Tomba dell' Oreo we meet
furthermore with Agamemnon in the underworld, and in
front of him Tiresias (Hinthial Teriasals
it reads, i.e. the shade of Tiresias). But
in the second chamber of this tomb, dating
from the fourth century B.C., there is also
a scene from Greek mythology which has
nothing to do with death and the under-
world ; Odysseus blinding the Cyclops
Polyphemus (inscriptions : Uthuste and
Cuclu). We can here speak of a renais-
sance, in so far as a scene from a Greek
myth formed the subject of the big picture
of the beginning of the sixth century in the Tomba dei Tori
(cp . fig . 2) . But the aim of the later school of Etruscan painters
is not so much to adorn the tomb with a beautiful decorative
panel after some Greek prototype ; on the contrary, they turn
to the Greek myths for the sake of their subjects and pick out
motives which also give expression to the curious strain
of cruelty inherent in the Etruscan mind.
This is seen most clearly in the famous picture from the
Fran9ois tomb at Vulci, discovered in 1857 by the Italian
painter Alessandro Fran9ois. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek
possesses a facsimile, executed by the painter Mariani after
the original in the Palazzo Torlonia, whither the Prince
Torlonia had it removed together with other wall-paintings
^ Walther Riezler, Weissgriindige aitische Lekythen, pi. 70.
52 TOMBAFRANgOIS
from the same tomb : but the copy is too smooth to be
trustworthy. Unfortunately, permission to obtain another
copy from the inaccessible Palazzo is certainly not to be
had. The picture (fig. 39) represents the sacrifice of Trojan
captives on the grave of Patroclus. Achilles (Etruscan
Achle) slaughters with his own hands the captured Trojans
(Etruscan Truials) ; Ajax, son of Oileus (Aivas Vilatas), and
Ajax, son of Telamon (Aivas Tlamunus) stand by ; Aga-
memnon (Achmemrun) is also present, and the shade of
Patroclus, thirsting for the blood (Hinthial Patrucles), as
well as two truly Etruscan figures, a female winged genius
of death, Vanth, and the Etruscan death-god, Charun,
coloured like the blue-bottle fly, with hammer uplifted.
This subject was chosen for the sake of the slaughter.^
Sex and cruelty are, to use a chemical expression, the ' basic
group ' of the Etruscan mind. Thus the same subject is
found repeatedly on Etruscan sarcophagi and vases, and in
the relief on a cinerary urn, and may be compared with the
most common and popular representation in Etruscan reliefs :
Eteocles and Polynices killing each other. Even a motive
like Ajax falling on his own sword constantly recurs in
Etruscan art, as well as the barbarous subject, maschalismos
(maiming of slain enemies), which is especially common on
Etruscan gems.^ A characteristic feature of the picture in
the Francois tomb is the deep wounds in the legs of the
Trojan captives ; they are meant to prevent attempts to
escape and were evidently in keeping with Etruscan custom.
For stress is laid on the cruelty of the Etruscans towards
prisoners of war by Greek as well as by Latin authors ;
thus, as early as the fifth century, the inhabitants of Caere,
after a sea victory, stoned to death their Phocaean captives ^ ;
and yet Strabo writes of the Caeretans that they were highly
respected for their bravery and love of justice, and because,
^ It is to be observed that the Etrus- iii. 1 14.
cans thrust with the sword ; this also ^ Cp. Beazley, Lewes House Col-
the Romans inherited ; whereas the lection of Gems, p. 38, 74 f.
Gauls cut and the Iberians thrust as ^ Herodotus i. 167.
well as cut. Polybius ii. 33. 6, and
ETRUSCAN CRUELTY 53
powerful as they were, they refrained from piracy. The
Romans knew better when they personified Etruscan cruelty
in Mezentius, King of Caere, who had living and dead tied
together to rot side by side ; nor did the Romans ever forget
that the inhabitants of Tarquinii once slaughtered three
hundred and seven Roman captives,^ and they took bloody
revenge on them. The Greeks also knew of the massacring
of prisoners of war, but they always cherished scruples about
it and felt qualms, as when Themistocles was compelled to
pay a tribute of slain captives to ' Dionysius, the eater of
raw flesh '.^
Before we leave the Fran9ois tomb we must remind the
reader of the existence of a remarkable series of pictures
with subjects taken from the conflicts between Etruria and
Rome in the time of the Roman kings .^
XVII
The demons of the Underworld who figure in the
Etruscan paintings are almost all sinister. The devils
brandishing torches and snakes, familiar both from the
paintings and from the reliefs on the cinerary urns, remind
one of Livy's * description of the fight of the Tarquinians
and the Faliscans against the Romans in 354 B.C., when a
troop of Etruscan priests, armed with flaming torches and
live snakes, threw themselves in ecstatic fury on the Roman
armies, who received them undauntedly and won the day.
Charun, also, is a common figure on the Etruscan sarcophagi
and cinerary urns of the fourth and following centuries,
suggesting by his colour the demon of putrefaction, Euryno-
mus, whom Polygnotus had painted, in his great picture of
the Underworld in the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi,
seated snarling on the skin of a carrion- vulture, his flesh the
^ Livy vii. 15, 10 ; 19. 3. xii. 1897, p. 58 fF.
^ Plutarch, Themistocles 13. * Livy vii. 17. 3-5, Cp. iv. 33. 2.
^ K6Tte,jfahrbuck des archdol. Instit.
54 CHARUNANDTHELASAS
colour of a blue-bottle fly.^ Chanin, therefore, is not identical
with the old ferryman, Charon, of the Greeks ; he is the
messenger of death, the terrible f etcher of souls, like Charos
in the popular Greek belief of our own day. Only the
' Charon door ' of the Greek theatre indicates the existence
of similar popular ideas among the ancient Greeks.
The winged Vanth in the Fran9ois tomb seems to be
one of the benevolent demons of the underworld, the Lasas.
Such a one also appears in a door panel in the Tomba Golini,
already frequently cited : here she has wings, snakes in
her girdle, and a scroll in her hand (fig. 40). She is
evidently either receiving or escorting the dead, a young man
in a mantle, who stands in a biga with running horses ; in
the inscription above him the word Larth can easily be read,
proving that he is not a professional charioteer, but a young
man of high standing. His arrival in the underworld is
greeted by a trumpeter, painted over the door. We may
notice here that the ' Tyrrhenian trumpet ' was famous far
and wide and was even introduced into Greece ; it is men-
tioned several times in Greek tragedies.^ The curved
trumpet here seen is also depicted on a wall in the Tomba
degli Scudi at Corneto and, like the curved staff of the augurs,
was adopted by the Romans, who designated both of them
by the name of lituus ; Cicero maintains that the lituus-
trumpet was the earlier of the two and gave its form and name
to the lituus-staff, the badge of the augurs. The introduction
of the lituus-staff was attributed to Romulus, and his sacred
staff was said to have been rediscovered by a miracle in the
time of Camillus,'
The scroll in the hand of the female demon, referred to
above, presumably contained an account of the good actions
of the dead, to be used when he presented himself before the
throne of Hades. The good genius herself is seen at work
in a small panel of the Tomba degli Scudi, where she is
^ Pausanias x. 28. 7-8. ^ Cicero, De divinatione i. 30. Plu-
^ Sophocles, Ajax 17. Aeschylus, tarch, Camillus 32.
Eumenides 567. Euripides, Rhesus 988.
Fig. 39. WALL-PAINTING FROIM THE TOMBA FRANCOIS AT VULCI
Fig. 40. PAINTING IN THE TOMBA GOLINI AT ORVIETO
Fig. ^i. PAINTING FROM THE TOMBA DELLA PULCELLA
CEREMONY OF THE CERECLOTH 55
scratching an inscription on a tablet (cp. fig. 27), while
another holds a torch upside down. Both these figures are
repeated in the reliefs of the Etruscan cinerary urns and pass
directly into the plastic art of Roman sarcophagi as two
allegorical figures : Fama, who writes the merits of the
dead on a tablet, and the genius of Death with torch inverted.
A couple of flying genii appear already in the Tomba della
Pulcella, which belongs to the first half of the fifth century,
in the pointed pediment above the recess in which the ashes
of the dead were deposited. They carry between them a
cloth which they seem to be laying down, probably the cere-
cloth for the dead (fig. 41).^ Perhaps this also explains the
mysterious scene, figured on two tomb altars from Chiusi,
one of which is in the Barracco Collection (fig. 42), the other
in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Catalogue No. H. 76). The
motives of the reliefs on these limestone altars from Chiusi
and on the cinerary urns from the same town, all dating from
the sixth century, are taken from the funeral, like the sub-
jects in the contemporary tomb-paintings, and represent the
lament of men and women over the dead on the bier, the
burial feast and the preparations for it, and the wild dancing-
scenes at the funeral. It may thus be that the scene on the
relief illustrated, which seems to give a picture of the women's
quarters, represents the women of the house in the act of
scrutinizing and choosing the cerecloth for the deceased ;
meanwhile, the house was probably draped with cloth, and
the dwellers of the house put on mourning. Presumably
the mourning colour of the Etruscans was white, like that
of the Romans at a later date ; when in mourning, the women
of Rome, to the wonder of Plutarch, assumed white dresses
and white headgear, at the same time loosening their hair.^
The hair flowing down upon the shoulders is also frequently
seen in reliefs on cinerary urns. But there is still something
mysterious in this motive, and an examination of the mutilated
^ An Etruscan gem shows the dead Beazley, The Lewes Home Collection of
Ajax and a winged genius in the Ancient Gems, p. 34, no. 37.
act of placing the cerecloth over him. ^ Plutarch, Aetia romana 26 and 14.
56 ETRUSCAN DEMONS
ash urn in the Museum of Chiusi (fig. 43) does not make it
any clearer. This urn has hitherto been explained as repre-
senting a marriage scene. But as the opposite side of the
urn represents scenes at the door of the tomb, it is more
natural to interpret this relief also as a death scene ; the
flute-player and the two men with laurel branches we know
from the funeral ceremonies (cp. p. 19), and the curious scene
to the right, where two men draw a fringed cloth like a
baldachin over a veiled centre figure, each of whose arms is
held by two side figures (probably a man and a woman),
might then be conjectured to represent a sort of symbolic
interment where the dead is placed in a sitting posture,
supported by the family, instead of the normal posture,
full length on the bier.
It is to be hoped that future investigation may throw
some light on this point, and may also deal with the question
whether the oft-recurring motive on the Roman sarcophagi
of two genii holding a cloth (parapetasma) between them, as
a background either for a scene or for the portrait of the
deceased (fig. 44), can be traced to Etruscan prototypes or
not. Hitherto, we have probably been too one-sided in
attributing the types and symbols of the plastic art of Roman
sarcophagi to Greek pictures, and the investigation of the
share of Etruria therein would be a fine subject for a mono-
graph.
XVIII
But the benevolent genii and Lasas are absolutely in the
minority in the paintings and plastic art of Etruria, and
become rarer as time goes on. The mood rises from sinister
gloom to wild terror. Two pictures will illustrate this
climax. In the Tomba del Tifone at Corneto, which was
discovered in 1832 and which is one of the grandest of the
family vaults of Etruria, there is preserved, besides the
serpent-legged demons from which the tomb has derived its
name, a large wall-painting representing the journey of a
Fig. 41
RELIEF ON A TOMB ALTAR FROM CHIUSI
In the Barracco Collection in Rome
s6
Fig. 43. CINERARY URN FROM CHIUSI
TOMBADELTIFONE 57
young man to the realm of the dead (fig. 45). To the left is
seen an altar towards which the procession of mantle-clad
youths moves ; they are led by a young demon with snakes
in his hair, and a torch and a snake in his hands. The
procession advances to the sound of a lituus-trumpet, and
the young men carry staves and seem to be the clients of the
central figure. The central figure is made conspicuous by
walking without any attributes in the centre of the procession
right in the front, but over his right shoulder we see Charun's
clawlike hand, and Charun advances behind him like a
black shadow, characterized by pointed asses' ears, snakes in
his hair, and his terrible hammer. The high rank of the
young man is made apparent by the inscription over his
head : * Laris Pumpus Arnthal clan cechase,' i. e. Laris
Pumpus, son of Arnth, priest (sacerdos). Here, then, we
have another of the priestly aristocrats of Etruria. After him
come two more companions with staffs, and a trumpeter,^ as
well as two young men without any attributes, and the scene
is terminated by some dim figures, one of which seems to be
a woman with a snake in her hair and another to be of negroid
type ; possibly these are the rulers of the underworld
according to a later local Etruscan conception. One thing,
at any rate, is plain, that the dead youth, in spite of his
splendid following, goes to meet a sorrowful fate. What
can the sound of the instruments avail when Charun's claw
is laid on his shoulder !
This tomb dates, as far as can be judged by the style of
the painting, from the first half of the fourth century B.c.^
^ Trumpets at Roman funeral pro- century B.C.).
cessions are known from reliefs on ^ Contemporary and akin in subject
sarcophagi. Rom. Mitt, xxxiii. 1908, is the Tomba Bruschi at Corneto.
pi. iv (pp. 18-25), ^^^ Cagnat and Monumenti, viii, pi. 36. Stryk, Kam-
Chabot, Manuel d'Archdol. Romaine, mergrdber, p. lOi. The processions
p. 586, fig. 315. Notice in the second here have quite a festive look; a
relief from i^unitemum, Rom. Mitt, woman finds time to look at herself in
1908, pi. iv, at the bottom, how the a glass, but the devils, who appear in
banquet with the members of thefamily the crowds or lurk in the corners, show
reclining on festive couches is also pre- that the occasion is a serious one.
served in early Rome (second to first
2468 I
S8 TOMBADELCARDINALE
From the beginning of the next century dates the Tomba del
Cardinale at Corneto, which was discovered shortly after
1760,^ then forgotten and filled in again, and finally reopened
in 1786 ^ by Cardinal Garambi, bishop of Corneto. It has
suffered much by exposure to wind and weather and to
tourists for more than a hundred and fifty years. It has a
narrow frieze with battle scenes, doubtless mythological, but
the interest is centred in the long narrow frieze of pictures
under the ceiling. The subject of this is the march of the
shades towards the other side (fig. 46). A woman is drawn
on a two-wheeled cart by two winged demons, one light and
the other blue-black, both wearing the traditional garb of
the genii of death, familiar from the contemporary sarcophagi
and cinerary urns : a shirt with braces, and high top boots.
This is perhaps the young woman who is mentioned in the
inscription of the tomb : ' Ramtha, daughter of Vel and
Vestrcni, who was wife (puia) of Larth Lartha, and who lived
{valce instead of svalce) nineteen years.' A young man follows
in a long cloak : he turns round to a black, winged demon
carrying a hammer (fig. 47). Beyond the gateway of the
underworld behind him a devil of the same type is seated,
and then comes a crowd of young people driven along by
two devils, one of whom threatens them with his hammer.'
A woman, who looks back moaning, is being brutally dragged
along by two male demons, and at the end of the procession
two winged devils are seen hastening forward, slender of
limb and agile of movement, like poisonous insects. In a
fragment of a frieze, which is now badly damaged, the Charun
devil was once more seen in the act of crushing a skull with
his hammer.*
This picture has a quality which reminds one of the
^ Caylus, Recueil d'antiquitds iv. Ducati, Monumenti dei Lined xx.
(Paris, 1761), 112 f. pp. 607-12. Beazley, Lewes House
^ Tiraboschi, Storia delta lett. ital.. Collection of Ancient Gems, p. 33,
Venezia, 1795, i. 13 fF. footnote. no. 36 (pi. 3).
' Similar motives on tombstones ^ Badly illustrated in Inghirami,
and Etruscan gems. Cp. Grenier, Monumenti etruschi iv. pi. xxvii.
BolognaviUanovienneetetrusque,^.^'].
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58
CONCEPTIONOFTHEHEREAFTER 59
frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa, but which is much more
terrible because no hope of paradise atones for the horror.
The reliefs on contemporary cinerary urns tell the same tale.
To be sure, the dead reclines fat and finely bedecked on the
lid of these cinerary urns, holding a drinking-bowl, or,
if female, a fan. This is only tradition and has nothing
to do with actual feeling. It is clear enough that the old
confident conception of the hereafter as an eternal sympo-
sium has been exploded. To this the reliefs on the urns
bear witness. These reliefs, if they do not directly evade
the problem by choosing neutral scenes from Greek mytho-
logy, reveal a demoniac possession of appalling intensity.
We need no literature in order to realize that the Etruscans
under the pressure of disaster became another people, pessi-
mistic, in terror of death, and devoid of any resiliency which
would allow them to indulge in the pleasures of life. If this
spiritual incubus descended upon the masses of the Roman
people we can better understand how it is that the poet
Lucretius can feel enthusiasm, and can arouse it in others,
when he preaches the gospel of godlessness and the annihi-
lation of the soul in death.^ For of the Etruscan people, at
any rate, the words of Lucretius ^ hold good :
Omnia perfunctus vitai praemia marces.
All that life had to give, thou hast enjoyed,
And now thou fadest.
^ De rerum natura iii. 912 fF. ^ iii. 956.
INDEX
The * indicates that the citation is in the notes.
A
Achilles, 9, 52.
Acrobats, 28.
Aeschylus, 19*, 54*.
Agamemnon, 51, 52.
Ajax, 52.
Altars, 55.
Amphitheatres, 25.
Apollodorus, 36*.
ApoIIonius Rhodius, 27*
Appian, 15.
Aristophanes, 26.
Aristotle, 15, 29*, 33, 44.
Athenaeus, 13, 15*, 33*,
34*. 37*-
Attic influence, 20, 22.
Auguri, Tomba degli,
10 f., 41.
Augustus, 48.
B
Bacchanti, Tomba dei,
36.
Ballerina, la bella, 3, 17.
Ballot-balls, 32.
Barone, Tomba del, i, 2,
20 f., 29.
Barracco Collection, 55.
Bells, 17, 37.
Bighe, Tomba delle, i,
2, 22 fF., 28 ff., 46.
Black vessels, 23*.
Bolsters, 30.
Boxers, see Pugilists.
Brass circles, 8.
British Museum, 14, 44.
Bruschi, Tomba, 57*.
Caccia, Tomba della, 43.
Caere, 8, 52 f.
Caeretan hydriae, 10.
Cakes, 35, 40.
Cameron, Mary Lovett,
^3-
Campana, Tomba, 7 f.
Campania, 13 f., 28, 44.
Candelabra, candles, 39.
Cardinale, Tomba del,
^58f-. .
Casuccini, Tomba, 26,
29*.
Cato, 32, 35, 40, 44.
Catullus, 48*.
Cerecloth, 55 f.
Chaplets, 17, 20, 37, 42.
Chariot race, 23.
Charun, 7, 14, 52 ff.,
57 ff-
Chmsi, 5, 8, 26, 29*, 38,
44.55-
Cicero, II*, 26*, 27, 35,
^48*, 54.
Cuents, 46.
Cloth, 55 f.
Clusium, see Chiusi.
Copenhagen, see Ny
Carlsberg Glyptotek.
Corneto, 1-2 and passim.
Cortsen, 13*, 16*, 34,
38*.
Cosa, 8.
Couches, 30, 41 f.
Crete, 8, 29.
Critias, 38.
Cyprus, 8*, 23, 29.
Cyrene, 9.
D
Dancers, 16 ff., 19, 22,
26, 29, 36.
Danielsson, 10*.
Dasti, 3*.
Deacinare, 32.
Demons, 49 ff., 53 ff.,
56 ff.
Dennis, 3, 40.
Diodorus, 48*.
Dionysius of Halicarnas-
sus, II*, 15, 16*, 23,
26, 33*, 44*, 45*, 46*,
Dispater, 13.
Door, painted, 11, 15.
Dromon, 37.
Eggs, 31,38, 42-
Egypt, 9f., 20, 31, 38,
41,42.
Equestrian procession,
13. IS f-. 23, 24.
Eteocles and Polynices,
52..
Etruria, 43 S. and passim.
Euphronius, 24.
Euripides, 54*.
Euthymides, 24.
Exercises, preparatory,
27 f.
Fama, 55.
Fescennines, 18.
Flaminicae, 23.
Flute-players, 15, 16, 22,
26, 35, 40, 56.
Footstools, 41.
Franfois, Tomba, 3,
51 ff-
Gauls, 47.
Geryon, 50.
62
INDEX
Giustiniani, Tomba
Francesca, 3.
Gladiators, 13.
Goethe, 2.
Golden vessels, 38.
Golini, Tomba, 37 ff.,
40 f., 42, 50, 54.
Gregoriano, Museo, 5,
17-
H
Hades, 50.
Helbig, 5, 6.
Hermes, 28.
Herodotus, 52*.
Hesychius, 16.
Hetaerae, 32 ff.
Hieron, 44.
Hittites, 23.
Horses, 16.
Hunting leopards, 31,
Hypothymis, 37.
I
Iliad, 13, 29*.
India, 31.
Inscriptions, 10, 11, 15,
21. 34. 35. 38 f-, 47 f-.
50 f., 57, 58.
Ionian style, 9, 10 f.
Isaeus, 33.
Iscrizioni, Tomba delle,
I, 2, 14 ff., igff., 41.
Isocrates, 13*.
J
Jacobsen, Carl, 5, 17.
Juvenal, 23*, 31*.
K
Kestner, i, 14, 20, 28.
Kitchen-scenes, 40 f.
Kneading, 40 f.
Korte, 3, 9, 21, 53*.
Kyme, 44 f.
L
Lanista, 13.
Larth, 39, 54.
Lasas, 54 f.
Lassoing of the horse,
24.
Laurels, 19 f., 32, 56.
Lectistemia, 34, 42.
Lecythi, 51.
Leonesse, Tomba delle,
3. 19.31
Leopardi, Tomba dei,
30 f.
Lesche, 53 f.
Letto funebre, Tomba
del, 41 f.
Lituus, 54, 57.
Livy, 8, 15*, 16*, 18,
23*, 26*, 35*, 44*,
46*.. 47. 53-
Lucretius, 59.
Ludii, ludiones, 18.
Lysias, 18*.
M
MagUano, 8.
Martha, Jules, 3, 23*.
Medical lore, 19.
Melian vases, 7 f.
Mezentius, 53.
Michelangelo, 51.
Milani, 6, 26.
Minium, 18.
Morente, Tomba del,
24, 40.
Morto, Tomba del, 16,
41.
Miiller-Deecke, 23*,48*.
N
Naked pages, 33.
Nicocles, 13.
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek,
5 and passim.
O
Odrysians, 19.
Odysseus, 51.
Olympic Games, 25.
Oreo, Tomba dell', 36,
49 ff.
Orfeo e d' Eurydice,
Tomba d', 37*.
Orvieto, 37.
Palaestra, scenes of the*
28 f.
Parapetasma, 56.
Parthenon, 25.
Patroclus, 52.
Pausanias, 54*.
Persephone, 50.
Persius, 42.
Persona, 13*.
Phersu, 12.
Philochorus, 43*.
Phoenicians, 10, 27.
Pindar, 44.
Plautus, 18*, 30, 32, 36,
41*, 47, 50*.
Plutarch, 15*, 18*, 47*,
53*. 54*. 55-
Polybius, 44*, 59*.
Polygnotus, 53 f.
Pompae, 15 f.
Porsenna, 39, 44, 45.
Priesthood, 35, 57.
Prinia, 8*.
Prisoners of war, 52 f.
Propertius, 48.
Prylis, 29.
Pugilists, 15, 27, 28.
Pulcella, Tomba della,
3. 38, 55-
Pulcinella, Tomba del,
12 f.
Pyrrhiche, 29.
Querciola, Tomba, 36,
43-
R
Rasenas, 39.
Reclining at table, 34,
36, 57*-
Riding sideways, 27.
Rings, 32.
Rome, 45 f. and passim.
Rumpf, Andreas, 7 f.
Rushforth, 39*.
Ruva, 38*.
Salii, 18.
Samnites, 47.
Sappho, 23*, 37*.
Sarcophagi, 14, 34, 53,
55 f-. 57*-
Schulze, Wilh., 39*, 45,
46*. _
Scimmia, Tomba della,
25 f-. 29> 45-
Scudi, Tomba degli,
34 ff-. 54-
Seneca, 41*.
Shields, 8.
Skutsch, 16*.
Slaves, 41.
Soothsayers, 48.
Sophocles, 44, 54*.
Spectators, 24 f.
Stackelberg, i, 2, 14, 20,
23, 24, 27, 28.
Stands, 24 f.
Strabo, 43*.
Struppus, 23*.
INDEX
Stryk, von, 3 f.
Sunshade, 26.
Symposia, 29 ff., 37 if.,
42.
T
Tacitus, 20*.
Tapestries, 8 f.
Tarquinius, 45.
Tarquitius Priscus, 48.
Technique, 21.
Tertullian, 13*, 23.
Tevarath, 11.
Theophrastus, 19*, 34*.
Theopompus, 34*.
Theseus, 49 f.
Thomsen, Vilh., 40*.
Thucydides, 44*.
Thulin, 48*.
Thiirmer, i, 20.
Thymiaterion, 26, 39.
Tifone, Tomba del,
56 f.
Timaeus, 33*.
Tiresias, 51.
Tomba, see the different
names.
Tonsilia tappetia, 30*.
Tori, Tomba dei, 3, 9 f.,
20,51.
Tor Ionia, 51.
Treasury of the Siph-
nians, 25.
Triclinio, Tomba del,
16 f., 20, 27, 31.
Tripudium, 18.
63
Triumphators, 18.
Troilus, 9.
Trumpets, 54, 57*.
Tuchulcha, 49 f.
Tusurthi, 34.
Tutulus, 22 f., 42.
Tyrrhenians, 43.
U
Urns, cinerary, 19, 30*.
34. 53. 55. 56- '
Vanth, 52, 54.
Varro, 19, 41*, 45.
Vases, 4, 20, 22 ff.
Vasi : Tomba dei V. Di-
pinti, 5, 36.
Vecchio, Tomba del, 37.
Veil, 3, 7, 35, 47.
Virgil, 48*.
Vitruvius, 25.
Volnius, 45.
Vulci, 3, 51.
W
Weege, 2, 4, 6, 7, 22 ff.,
27, 28, 31 f., 34.
Wigand, 26*.
Women, Etruscan, 33.
Wrestlers, 11, 15, 28.
X
Xenophanes, 19.
Xenophon, 19.
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